Crossfire
by FrozenPhantasm
Summary: The story of Sam Healy and Red Reznikov before, during and after OITNB's first season. Like my other fics, this isn't a song fic, per se, though it was inspired by the song I've chosen as the title.
1. Crossfire

**Title: "Crossfire"**

 **Author: FrozenPhantasm**

 **Summary: The story of Sam Healy and Red Reznikov before, during, and after the events of OITNB's first season. Like all my fics, this one isn't a songfic per se, but it was inspired by a song.**

 **Disclaimer: Of course I don't own any of these characters. They belong to the wonderful Jenji Kohan, Netflix, and all their other respective owners. Song lyrics (when included) will always be attributed to the artist, and some dialogue will be quoted from OITNB where the story warrants it (it should be pretty obvious which pieces of dialogue these are).** **I write fanfic for funsies, not monies.**

 **Chapter One**

 _And we're caught up in the crossfire of Heaven and Hell_

 _And we're searching for shelter_

 _Lay your body down_

 _Lay your body down_

 _Lay your body down...next to mine_

 _"Crossfire" by Brandon Flowers_

She didn't look like a degenerate. The small, matronly woman sitting in front of him looked…scared, more than anything. She sat upright, a scowl fixed on her round, cute little face, but he saw the way her hands shook in her lap. Her blue eyes—her captivating blue eyes—were puffy and rimmed in red. She had been crying, and it was obvious. He wondered how much shit she had gotten for that. He looked her over, and saw her shudder as a chill passed up her spine.

"Are you cold? There's a blanket over there, if you need it." He gestured towards a chair, where a standard prison-issue blanket was folded. "The heating and cooling in this place are pretty sub-par, so in the winter we all freeze, and summers are unbearable."

The red-haired woman shook her head slightly. She glanced at him briefly, and then her gaze darted around the room.

"Well, it's there if you need it." He said, lamely. He picked up the file in front of him, opening it to the first page. "Galina Nikolaievna Reznikova," he read, "Fourteen years for organized crime and criminal conspiracy. An impressive rap sheet, inmate."

"I know what I did," the redhead snapped, "You don't have to remind me." It was the first time he'd heard her speak, and her accent was so thick that he almost couldn't understand her. Her tone was severe, but her bravado was false. Realizing her error in talking back to a member of the staff, the woman shivered again.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I have…I've had a difficult day…"

There were tears gathering in her eyes, but he could see that she was trying her hardest not to let them fall. She was determined; he could see that from the set of her jaw and the way that she rallied herself. When her eyes met his again, they were clear, unperturbed.

"No harm, no foul," he said amicably, "But you probably shouldn't get into the habit of talking to the other guards that way. They're not all as understanding as I am."

The Russian woman nodded.

"Well, I usually like to give new counselees a nice speech about how everything will be fine if they just keep to themselves and keep their heads down, and let them know that they can always come to me with any concerns they might have. But you look like you're eager to get this over with and go back to your bunk, so why don't I just give you a quick little tour of the facilities and then you can be on your way?"

She looked up at him, seemingly appreciative.

Most of the girls who passed through his office were no older than nineteen or twenty. They had short sentences for minor felonies, and they had already been through the system, whether that system was foster care or group homes or juvie. They had no time for Sam Healy, MSW, prison counselor and paper-pusher extraordinaire. They gave not one single fuck for his platitudes. These were also the girls who, inevitably, ended up getting their asses kicked within their first week for mouthing off to the wrong person, or sent down to SHU for challenging a guard.

This woman was different. She was older, more controlled, and she was smart. Healy could tell from her file; no idiot could have played the role in the mafia that she did. He trusted that she would have enough common sense to know how to choose her battles. Besides, even if she didn't, she would figure it out quickly. Most of the older inmates did, especially when they had long sentences like hers. Figuring out how the system worked was a necessity for inmates like Galina Reznikova.

Healy rose from his desk, walking to the door and beckoning for her to follow him. She stood, and walked with him out into the hall. He pointed out the recreation room, then led her into the dining area and the kitchen.

"So you have experience in kitchens?" Healy asked as he led her into the food prep area. The redhead said nothing; she simply looked around as if sizing the place up. "Umm…food preparation?"

She looked up at him, realizing that he was addressing her.

"Some experience, yes," she replied.

"Well maybe we can get you a job in here," he said, explaining that Litchfield had recently lost its old cook, and then calling Romano forward.

"Reznikov," he introduced the new arrival to the mute woman.

"Red," the Russian woman corrected, shaking Romano's hand. As Healy looked on, he noticed a strange expression cross the redhead's face; one of her eyebrows lifted as though she were trying to figure something out. He ushered her out of the kitchen, intent on finishing the tour and turning Reznikov loose. She was his last appointment of the day, and he was eager to get out of there and go home.

Not that he had much to go home to. His last relationship had ended disastrously just a few months before. _Lying, cheating cunt_ , Healy thought, instantly feeling both guilty and surprised at the vitriol. He couldn't help it, though; the anger always surged through him when he thought of how Rachel had not only fucked around on him, but thrown her affairs in his face towards the end.

With her gone, Healy's house was empty and lonely, but at least it wasn't Litchfield. _Anywhere is preferable to this shithole_ , he thought as he led Reznikov through the hallway.

That attitude was a far cry from the one with which he had begun his counseling career. It almost made him sad to think of how optimistic he had been when he started this job nine years ago. He thought he was going to help people. He thought he was going to make a difference. The reality of it had been a slap in the face. Every day he thought about leaving this job, going back to school, doing something else, but who the hell was he kidding? He was too old now; he liked familiarity and routine, and Litchfield was his routine. Besides, despite how hard the realization that he no longer liked his job had hit him, Sam Healy was an eternal optimist. _One of these days_ , he always told himself, _One of these days I'm actually going to be able to do something real and help someone. Just one person, and then everything will all have been worth it_.

He dropped Reznikov off in the room she temporarily shared with a handful of other newbies, then went back to his office. After packing up his things to leave, he grabbed a pen and a pile of sticky notes from one of his desk drawers. On one of the neon-yellow slips of paper, he wrote _Reznikov—kitchen_ , and then stuck the note to his filing cabinet, so that he would see it in the morning when he began doling out work assignments for the new inmates. Considering his work done, he turned off the lights, locked up, and then got the hell out.

He made the long drive to his house in Utica, sighing in relief as he stepped through the front door and then instantly undid his belt and stepped out of his pants. His favorite part of the day was when he finally got home and was able to walk around in just his socks, boxers and undershirt. He had an uneventful evening, eating a frozen dinner, watching some television, and then going to bed. He clicked off the lamp on his bedside table, expecting to fall immediately into slumber, surprised when he couldn't will his brain to relax despite the lethargy of his body.

In his mind's eye, he kept on seeing the Russian woman's face, replaying over and over how her blue eyes had looked the first time she gazed directly at him. _I'm attracted to her_ , Healy realized with a jolt. How could he not be? She was no beauty queen; she was small and matronly and had a certain awkwardness about her. Still, she was pretty in her own way. Redheads had always appealed to him, and that woman's voice…god, the way it could switch from being rough as sandpaper to smooth like a caress. That combined with her accent was just about the sexiest thing Healy had ever heard.

This was bad news. Healy had seen his share of pretty women in his office, but the majority of them were barely more than bad-tempered children, and, besides being eye candy, they held no appeal for him. Even if he had been drawn to any of them the way that he was to Reznikov, he knew how wildly illegal inmate/guard relations were, even when consensual. Even if the laws hadn't been in place, Healy would never take advantage of any of the prisoners under his care that way. He thought, though, that he would be willing to make an exception in Reznikov's case, and that was what scared him.

 _I'm going to have to watch it_ , he thought, _Going to have to make sure not to get too chummy with Reznikov_. Red, he corrected himself. _She likes to be called Red…_


	2. Rumble Doll

_Sometimes I feel like I know too much and_

 _Sometimes I feel like I don't know nothing at all_

 _But I can still be soft to the touch_

 _Well, I am just a rumble doll._

 _-"Rumble Doll" by Patti Scialfa_

One thing that Healy had learned about Galina "Red" Reznikova was that she was crafty. Outwardly, she was a model inmate, but Healy heard gossip while he walked the halls, listening to conversations while trying to pretend not to listen. Red had the hookup. Red could get you anything you wanted, if you did something for her first. Couldn't prove it by Healy, or anyone else. Not a trace of contraband had ever been found on her or in her bunk.

This was why, the one time that Healy caught her doing something that was against the rules, he thought of it as a personal victory.

"That smells like illegal contraband to me, inmate," he said, coming up behind the Russian woman. The unexpected sound of his voice caused her to jump, and her hands tensed on the railing where she'd had them resting peacefully just a second before. Reflexively, she hearkened back to her teenage years, taking the cigarette from her mouth and flicking it away before turning around, trying to look as innocent as possible. All for naught, though. Red's face flushed just a few shades lighter than her hair when she realized she had been caught. Healy obviously saw her throw the cigarette away and, even if he hadn't, the smell of smoke was thick in the air.

From the doorway, Healy stepped onto the kitchen's loading dock. Red was surprised to see that his eyes glinted with amusement instead of vindictiveness, like any other guard's would have if they'd caught her. Maybe, then, she could get out of this without a shot. One of the other women, a bunkmate who had been released just two weeks after Red's things were moved into their shared cube, told her all about "shots," as formal reprimands were called here. Three strikes, and you're out. "Just like baseball," the former bunkie said. Red hadn't really understood the American sports reference, but she took note of the rule nonetheless.

Healy chuckled as he came to stand beside her, leaning heavily on the railing and surveying the empty prison yard beyond.

"Relax," he said, "I'm not writing you a shot. I don't care if you smoke." In truth, Healy didn't care about much of anything today. He was fresh off of a meeting with the warden, where he'd gotten his ass well and truly chewed. Right now, he despised the man and his job and, although he knew that he was being petulant and immature, was all but determined not to see to his responsibilities. That meant looking the other way when he saw inmates wearing lipstick or playing cards for money in the rec room. And letting Reznikov smoke, of course.

Healy told himself that this was the reason he was going so easy on her. In truth, he had noticed a pattern in his dealings with the redheaded Russian inmate. He was too lax with her; he let things slide that he shouldn't, and it was going to become a problem sooner or later if he didn't deal with it. Eventually, he knew, he would have to come down on her, just to keep the other prisoners and his supervisors from realizing the soft spot he seemed to be unconsciously developing.

 _But not today_ , he thought. Not when her shoulder-length hair was blazing like fire in the mid-afternoon sun and her eyes perfectly matched the cloudless sky and her face looked so beautiful with the hint of a blush still lingering on her skin.

"Did you…umm…" He hated the way he stuttered when he spoke to her, "Did you bring enough to share with the class?"

Red arched her eyebrows and looked puzzled, apparently unfamiliar with the idiom. That, too, Healy found endearing.

"I mean, do you have another cigarette on you that you'd be willing to give away?" he clarified.

She narrowed her eyes, thinking, weighing her options, and then reached into the apron she was wearing. She pulled out two cigarettes, along with a lighter. After handing him one, she put hers to her lips, lit it, and then passed him the lighter, which he put into his shirt pocket. That, he really couldn't let slide, since it was a safety hazard and he could get into serious shit if anyone found out that he'd let a prisoner keep something so dangerous.

 _Marvelous_ , Red thought, _Now I'll have to get more smokes_ and _another lighter from Vee_. That would cost her, but at least she wasn't getting a shot.

The two smoked in silence, until Healy felt compelled to say something.

"I didn't know you were a smoker."

"I'm not, normally," Red replied, the cigarette smoke making her voice deeper than usual. To Healy's dismay, he noted that her accent still struck a chord of desire within him.

"So what's the occasion?"

Red paused, thinking about how much she should let him into her personal life. Finally, she replied, "My husband's mother is dying."

"Oh," Healy said, "Are you two close?"

"Yes. When I first came to this country, I was young and pregnant with my first and newly married. New York was the biggest place I'd ever been in, and my English was bad. She helped me. In a lot of ways. It's hard knowing I can't be there to help her."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Healy said, thinking about his own mother and the last time he had seen her, the wound that her absence left and how he would do anything to see her again.

Noting that he sounded genuine, Red went on. "One of the other girls suggested requesting furlough, but then others told me not to even bother. I won't get it."

Healy nodded. "That's probably true. I've been here nine years; I've never seen anyone get furlough. Put in your request anyway."

Red looked over at him, surprised. Healy shrugged. "I'll see what I can do. Can't guarantee anything, but I'll try."

"Why are you being so nice to me?" Red asked, her suspicion aroused once again, "You're always nice to me. You're the only one. Why?"

Healy shrugged, tried to seem casual, and cursed the flush rising up on his own cheeks. "Because you're one of the few people here worth talking to. And because you share your contraband," he said, tossing the butt out to join hers on the ground beneath the dock.

Red seemed, to Healy, to be satisfied with that answer. Really, though, she was filing both his words and his actions away for later, to mull over and decipher while she cooked dinner that night. Abruptly, she changed the subject.

"Do you know you've got a chicken running around the prison yard?" she asked.

Healy chuckled. "Oh, god. Here we go…"

"What?"

"There is no chicken," he said, "I don't know who told you that story, but it's not true."

"It is!" Red exclaimed, "I saw her yesterday."

"I assure you, you didn't. People have been 'seeing the chicken' for the better part of a year now. No one has been able to find a chicken anywhere on the grounds."

"Okay, fine then; I didn't see it," Red said, throwing her second cigarette away, "But you mark my words, Healy, one day I'm going to catch that animal, and when I do, I'm going to cook it. I'll even share with you, but only out of spite to prove that I was right."

"Excellent," Healy replied, "What are you going to make for us?"

Red shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe a nice chicken Kiev. My Kiev is to die for."

With that, she turned around, waving as she went back to the kitchen that, although she'd only been in it for three months, no one in Litchfield could imagine having ever belonged to anyone else.

 **Author's Note: If you've never heard of the song I quoted at the beginning, you should look it up. Not only is it *beautiful*, it is *so* Red and always reminds me of budding Realy romance in Season 3 and hopefully beyond, if the OITNB gods decide to be nice to all us shippers in S4.**


	3. The Authority Song

**Author's Note : Damn, FrozenPhantasm, back at it again with the Realy stories! Jenji and the OITNB writers haven't given us much to work with in S4, but that doesn't mean we still can't dream, am I right? Plus, I couldn't just leave this little fic uncompleted, so I'm picking back up where I left off. Just to re-orient you guys, this is still in the past, sometime between what happened in the last chapter and the first time Red gets beaten by Vee.**

 _I fight authority, authority always wins._

 _Well, I fight authority, authority always wins._

 _Well, I've been doin' it since I was a young kid, I come out grinnin'_

 _Well, I fight authority, authority always wins._

 _John Mellencamp, "The Authority Song"_

"Reznikov!"

The tone of the voice made Red jump. She knew instantly whose it was, but she couldn't remember it ever having been so severe. At least, not with her.

She turned around, careful to keep her face blank and impassive.

"Healy," she acknowledged, putting her hands casually into the pockets of her hoodie.

"What's that you're wearing, inmate?" Healy asked, coming down the hall towards her. She was surprised to see his notepad in his hand.

For a moment, Red could not speak. She didn't know what Healy was playing at. She was doing nothing wrong, and, besides, he'd never even come close to reprimanding her. She took a quick glance around, and noticed that other inmates had stopped what they were doing and were now gawking at the sight of the diminutive Russian woman apparently about to get dressed down by her counselor.

"I…" Red said, stammering momentarily before finding her voice, "I don't know what you're talking about. Mr. Healy."

"You've got lipstick on, inmate," Healy said.

Red pursed her lips, unable to deny it. Her bright red lipstick had quickly become her trademark, but no one had ever told her anything. Healy took out a pen and began writing something down in his notepad.

"Makeup," he said as he wrote, "is against the rules. I'm going to have to give you a shot."

Red opened her mouth, but no words would come out. She'd never gotten a shot for anything, and besides…

"Everyone around here wears makeup!" she said, indignantly.

"Tell me about it," Healy replied, "We've been writing shots left and right, but no one seems to have learned their lesson. Let's hope that you do."

With that, he walked away, leaving Red staring after him, open mouthed. She looked around and saw that all eyes were on her. It was then that she realized what Healy had done, and why it was necessary.

There was a reason she'd never gotten a shot, and that reason was Healy. He favored her; everyone knew it, inmates, even the guards. She had been aware of this for weeks, but she'd taken it for granted and never stopped to think that it could have any repercussions for him and that, if it came down to it, he would choose his job, and his reputation, over her.

She couldn't even blame him for that. Red liked Counselor Sam Healy, and she recognized how much she needed to be on his good side, but she wasn't attached to him. If anyone had pressured her for associating with him, she would have chosen her own welfare over his any day. Red understood, but that didn't mean she couldn't be resentful, and she was.

That night, when he stepped into her cafeteria, she locked eyes with him across the room. Instead of giving him a welcoming smile as she usually did, Red narrowed her eyes and glared at him. Her makeup tonight was exaggerated to the point of being bizarre. She'd caked an entire face on, overdone it on the blush, did her eyeliner in (what she considered) an oddly attractive double cat eye, and, of course, finished it all off with layers of her red lipstick. She had no doubt that he could see it across the cafeteria.

Red stuck out her chin, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared right at him, daring him to write her another shot. Hell, she was even expecting him to cross the room, come over, and do just that. Instead, Healy looked away. He ignored her throughout dinner and, when the last inmate had left the cafeteria and his replacement showed up, he simply turned on his heel and left without saying or doing anything.


	4. Broken, Verse 1

_I wanted you to know_

 _That I love the way you laugh._

 _I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away._

 _"Broken" - Seether feat. Amy Lee_

Galina "Red" Reznikov, Healy quickly learned, was excellent at holding a grudge. It had been two weeks since he wrote the Russian inmate her very first shot, and, so far, the two had yet to speak. It wasn't for lack of trying on Healy's end, either. He had tried to engage her in conversation plenty of times, but Red wouldn't even say hello to him when their paths crossed in the hallways.

If he were a different kind of man, Healy might have said that he deserved it. The shot that he'd written her was wholly unnecessary. Yes, she was breaking the rules, but no more so than any of the other inmates. What he told her was true; there had been a significant increase in makeup usage, and no one could figure out why, or even how so much blush and eyeliner was ending up in the prison to begin with. It was also true that he and other COs had been giving out shots relentlessly, mostly to no avail, as the behavior continued unabated.

Healy knew that there had been no real reason to give Red a shot, though. He hadn't even wanted to, and likely wouldn't have, if he hadn't been trying to prove something to the new captain of the guards. Captain Joe Caputo seemed like he was mostly just interested in maintaining the status quo and not about making sweeping changes, but Healy didn't know the man, and didn't want his new superior to think that he was too chummy with the inmates. He certainly didn't want Caputo thinking that he favored any one of them.

So, in Healy's eyes, busting Reznikov had been necessary, if only to prove that he was still in charge. His relationship with her was one that seemed to have shifted, overnight, from prisoner and guard to an odd kind of friendship that flew in the face of everything he'd been taught in training. _Don't engage, don't be their buddy_ , they had told him, and he'd tried repeating it to himself each time that Red entered his office but, somehow, the refrain always died the second she opened her mouth, and she always left his office with what she wanted.

If he was being honest, Healy had needed to prove to himself, as well as to everyone else, that he still had the upper hand. He had learned the hard way, time and time again, that giving up control was a dangerous thing, and that it was especially catastrophic to surrender oneself to a woman. He had made himself vulnerable too much in the past, and gotten burned each and every time he did. He'd made a mess of his personal life that way, and he'd be damned if he was going to flush his career down the toilet as well.

Still, he did miss her…

With a sigh, he snatched a stack of intake forms from his desk, intending to pour over the new inmates' details and then assign them jobs based on what was in their files. He hoped that if he immersed himself in work, he could forget about…other things.

It seemed, though, that today was not his lucky day. Suddenly, there was a sharp rap on his office door that made Healy nearly fall out of his chair.

"What the hell?" he said to himself, before yelling at the person on the outside to come in.

He looked up from his paperwork and was surprised to see Romano standing in front of him, tears tracking down her distressed face.

"Hey," Healy greeted, "What's the matter?"

Romano, of course, said nothing. Instead, she pointed behind her, the gesture urgent but unintelligible.

"What? I don't…" Healy stammered, trying to figure out what was going on.

Romano stamped her foot and pointed again, and a fresh batch of tears sprang from her eyes.

"Is…is something wrong in the kitchen?" Healy asked. The silent inmate nodded vigorously, and then fled from the office. Healy followed, seeing all kind of horrors in his mind's eye. Maybe someone had fallen and broken something, or hacked off a piece of themselves with a kitchen knife. It had happened before, and it would happen again, but it was never any less of an awful surprise, or any less of a bitch to clean up.

Healy followed Romano through the cafeteria and into the kitchen. Before he rounded the corner, he was met with the most soul-crushing whimper he'd ever heard in his life. Someone was hurt in the back of the kitchen, and that person was in so much pain that their cries barely even sounded human.

 _Fuck_ , Healy thought. This was going to be bad.

He knew that instinctively, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Red's broken and battered body. Healy actually felt his heart sink into his stomach at the sight of her, lying on the floor in literal puddles of her own blood, gasping for breath while trying to move and finding herself paralyzed.

"Shit!" Healy exclaimed, his voice somewhere between a shout and a sob, "Oh holy fuck."

He wanted to go to her, but, luckily, he was able to sort himself out and handle business first. He pressed the button on his walkie-talkie, explaining the situation to the CO who answered and yelling for backup and for someone to call an ambulance.

With that done, he went to Red, crouching on the floor beside her prone body. She looked up at him and, although her eyes were blurry with tears, Healy could still see all of the agony and terror she felt reflected in them.

"It's okay, Red," he said, gently, "I'm here. Help is on the way, and I'm here."

She opened her mouth, tried to speak, but all that came out was a sharp rasp.

"It's all right," Healy repeated, trying to make himself believe it. She would know if he didn't, and that would only make things worse for her. One of her hands was above her head, opening and closing into a fist as the pain surged through her body. Healy reached out and took that hand in his own, feeling how frighteningly cold and clammy her skin was.

"Everything's going to be okay," he said softly, stroking her palm with his thumb. He repeated that over and over again, sitting with her and holding her hand until they were joined by a group of COs and the paramedics, who scooped Red up and took her out on a stretcher.


	5. Broken, Verse 2

**Hey kids! Sorry for the delay between chapters. I've been struggling with the double-headed monster of writers' block combined with massive amounts of work for my summer classes. Hope this chap makes up for it!**

The _worst is over now, and we can breathe again._

 _I want to hold you high and steal my pain away._

 _There's so much left to learn and no one left to fight._

 _I want to hold you high and steal your pain._

 _"Broken" by Seether featuring Amy Lee_

Healy had always hated the smell of hospitals. Now that he thought about it, he supposed that no one actually _liked_ that smell, but he found it especially upsetting. When he was a kid, he would tell his father that he hated visiting his mother in the hospital because the place just smelled "too clean." Healy knew now that the sanitary smell wasn't the problem; it was the other odors that lingered just beneath the disinfectant and the antibacterial soap. Smells of sickness, and sometimes smells of death and decay, barely masked by the cleaning chemicals. Those smells could never be erased.

Litchfield's medical wing was far from a fully-functioning hospital. If inmates ever needed serious medical care, they were always taken to the real hospital in town. Medical mostly catered to patients who had chronic conditions that needed management, or those who were recovering from something serious but were out of the danger zone. Still, despite not actually being a hospital, Medical definitely smelled like one, and Healy hated it.

He told himself that he was only here because it was his job to come. It was a good enough excuse; he did have his pen and clipboard, and the list of questions that he was required to ask. If he was being honest with himself, though, he knew that he would have come regardless, just to see her. They had told him that she was all right. Indeed, after the beating she took, it was a miracle that she was, by all accounts, going to be okay. Four ribs broken, one lung punctured, and she had, from what the doctors said, been kicked in the back so hard, and so many times, that she was lucky to still be able to walk, and would likely have back problems for the rest of her life. Healy had been unable to believe most of it when he read it, and now, he needed to see her, to make sure that she was really here, really going to be all right.

He knocked on the door that had her name on the plaque beside it. When there was no answer, he grabbed the doorknob and turned it slowly. The light in the room was dim and, as Healy crept in, he heard soft snores, punctuated by the occasional wheeze. The bed closest to the door was empty, but there was a lump atop the furthest one, a small body covered entirely in a blue blanket.

He walked over slowly, until he was standing by her bedside. Red was wrapped in blankets up to her chin, but her face was visible, and the sight of her was enough to make Healy gasp. He thought she had looked bad when he first found her after the beating, but now, even with all the blood cleaned off of her, she was barely recognizable. Her face was covered in gigantic, sickly-yellow bruises, with only intermittent patches of her porcelain skin showing through. It had been almost six weeks since the assault; he couldn't imagine how deep those bruises must have gone to still be visible. Her hair, too, seemed duller. Its vibrant purple-red had faded to a soft ginger, with half an inch of her natural bronze color growing in at her scalp.

Healy stood alongside the bed, simply staring in disbelief. He felt an indescribable feeling come over him, something that went deeper than mere pity and instead touched on heartbreak. It hurt him physically and emotionally to see Red looking like this. Whether this was because she was special to him or simply because she was a human being who was obviously in pain, he didn't know.

Of its own accord, his hand reached out towards the sleeping woman, surging forward to touch her face. Healy stopped himself at the last moment, just as he felt the warmth from her skin on his eager palm. This may have been one of the only times in his life that reason won out over sentiment. There was, he knew, nothing appropriate about touching a sleeping inmate, especially one who had just been through such severe physical trauma. Besides, from the look of her face, it was obvious that even the lightest of touches would hurt.

So Healy withdrew his hand, stuffing it instead in his pocket and standing awkwardly by the bed, wondering what to do now that he was here. To his relief, she solved that problem for him. He saw movement beneath her eyelids, and then her eyes fluttered open, and Healy was relieved when she looked at him, at first in confusion, and then recognition.

"Hello, Healy," she said. Her voice was faint, not much more than a whisper, and raspier than usual, but he was glad to hear it nonetheless.

"Hey there, Red. How are you feeling?"

She let out a sound that could have been a wry laugh or a labored breath; Healy couldn't tell which.

"I'm wonderful," she said, "Liable to get out of this bed and start turning cartwheels any second now."

Healy couldn't help but chuckle at that, and he was pleased to see the corners of her mouth lift into a small smile. She stirred slightly underneath the covers, balling her fists in her blanket and throwing it aside, then moving to try and sit up, and frowning when she realized that she couldn't. Her spine was on fire, and it felt like a million tiny swords were stabbing her chest, and the sheer intensity of the sensations paralyzed her. She muttered something under her breath in Russian before turning her face to Healy.

"You want to help me here?" she asked.

"Sure," he replied, "What do you need?"

"I want to sit up," she said, "Can you steal the pillows from that bed over there and put them behind my back?"

Healy nodded and went over to the bed, snatching the pillows up and bringing them back. He faced somewhat of a quandary when he returned, though, because he didn't know how to go about actually getting them into position. Red had already demonstrated that she could barely move on her own, and he was afraid that if he tried to move her, he would somehow break her.

Once again, she remedied the problem herself, reaching out one of her hands to him. He placed his palm in hers, and immediately felt like a terrible person for the way that his heart surged with excitement at being able to touch her.

"Pull me up from the front, and then put a hand behind my back to steady me," she ordered. Healy obeyed, lifting her gently, bracing her by placing his other hand softly but firmly on Red's lower back, and then slipping first one pillow, then the other, behind her. With the pillows in place, he lowered her body down onto them.

Red settled into the pillows, breathing heavily from the exertion and, to Healy's dismay, sweating slightly and obviously struggling with the pain that came from moving. After a few minutes, though, she sighed in contentment.

"Oh, that feels so much better," she said, "I keep telling the stupid nurse that I need to sit up. I can't spend all day lying around like a corpse, you know. But these idiots won't let me move unless it's to go the bathroom, and then only when they decide I can."

"Well, I'm…I'm sure it's for your own good…" Healy began, but Red cut him off with a scoff.

"My ass. If it were for my own good, they wouldn't keep me doped up all the time. The pain relief is nice, obviously, but most of the time they have me on so many drugs I can't even keep my eyes open. I'm tired of it."

"Give it another week or so," Healy said, "You'll be back in gen pop, wishing you could come back here."

"Not likely," Red replied, "Anyway, what are you doing here? Did you come to bring me some cigarettes? I would love a cigarette right now."

Healy chuckled. "Red, you couldn't smoke a cigarette right now, even if I had left my sanity at the door and brought illegal contraband to your sickbed."

"You're probably right," she said with a sigh.

"I'm actually here to talk to you about the assault. Specifically, what you remember, and who attacked you."

Red rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. "Yeah, you and everyone else. That's all anyone wants to talk about with me. You know you're the third person to come in here and ask me the same damn question."

"Well, that's because we want to see justice done…"

"Don't give me that bullshit, Healy," Red said, "Justice. Right. You want to be able to fill out your paperwork and find someone to punish, and then file that person and my accident report away nicely and neatly. Meanwhile, you return me to the dorms, and everyone knows that I'm the reason someone got sent to Seg or kicked down to Max, and I get my ass kicked again before all my wounds are even healed."

"We would make sure that didn't happen, Red," Healy replied.

"Sure," she said. Before she could speak again, she coughed, and the movement of her chest hurt so badly that the pain was visible on her face.

"Oh, shit…" Healy said, coming forward. Red waved him away, shaking her head.

"I'm fine," she said in a strangled voice, "I'll be all right."

When her coughing subsided and she caught her breath again, she looked up at Healy with the same agonized expression he'd seen in her eyes on the day that he found her in the kitchen.

"I can't help you, Healy," Red rasped, "I really can't. I'd love for the people who did this to me to be put away, but I didn't see anything. I was too busy having the shit knocked out of me. Everything from that day is a blur."

"Okay," he said, nodding, "All right. But are there any details you do remember? Any little thing might help…"

"No. No, there's nothing. I'm sorry. Now, I think I need some rest."

"But, Red—"

"Thank you for coming," Red said dismissively, "And for all your help. But I really am tired now, Healy. I'll see you later."


	6. Never Get You Right

_And I'll give you my opinion; it's the only one I've got._

 _They'll turn you into something whether you are it or not._

 _But they'll never get you right._

 _I've been watching you all night._

 _And the people passing by_

 _They should tremble at your sight._

 _\- "Never Get You Right" by Brandon Flowers_

 **Chapter 6**

The cafeteria had, historically, been Healy's least favorite area of the prison. It was loud, chaotic, and crowded. There was always too much going on, and the guards posted at each exit had far too much to keep up with. Healy was a loner and didn't like to be in the middle of so much hubbub, so he usually avoided the place like the plague. However, on this particular morning, coffee was a necessity. He'd not heard his alarm clock, and barely had enough time to shave and wash his face, much less wait for his old and slow coffee maker to deliver his requisite liquid energy.

He strode up to the serving station that formed a barricade between the cafeteria and the kitchen proper, barely noticing that he was cutting off several inmates from being able to collect the last of their food. They grumbled, but there wasn't much that they could do, so they merely glared at Healy as he requested a cup of coffee from Romano. The mute woman nodded, handing her tongs to the inmate next to her and disappearing into the back.

All of a sudden, there came a crash from the kitchen, metal clanging on the tiled floor and a woman's panicked scream. It was so loud and unexpected that several of the inmates gave their own shrieks and backed away from the serving station. Even Healy himself jumped. Just as he was about to make a dash for the kitchen, he heard a husky, heavily-accented voice raised in annoyance.

" _Blyadi_! What the fuck, Anderson! Watch where the hell you're going!" Healy almost chuckled to hear Red angrily chastising one of her kitchen underlings. To his surprise, she appeared in the entryway to the kitchen a moment later, holding a steaming prison-issue mug and wearing a dark scowl on her face.

"And clean all that shit up!" she yelled behind her, before striding over to Healy and holding the cup out to him.

When he took it, he gave her a wry grin, which he expected her to return with a smile of her own, if even a tiny one. Red's face, however, remained frozen in a look of displeasure, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed.

"Trouble with the help, Red?" Healy asked, still hoping for even the smallest semblance of a warmth from her.

"Fucking Anderson," she said, "She dropped an entire dish of scrambled eggs. It's the second time since she's been here. That girl is a disaster in the kitchen; I want her removed."

Healy chuckled lightly, but, when he looked at the Russian woman, he saw that she was being deadly serious.

"I can't switch job assignments around just because you don't get along with other kitchen staff, Red," he replied with a sigh.

Red's eyes narrowed even further, and she stared at Healy so intently and so angrily that he actually felt himself growing uncomfortable under her gaze. He was about to turn away and take his leave when, from out of nowhere, there was a clamor on the far side of the cafeteria. One of the black women, an inmate whom Healy recognized as Parker and who, as far as he knew, was actually a pretty good friend of Red's, had jumped up from her seat, and was now rushing towards the nearest garbage can.

As the entire cafeteria watched in equal parts fascination and revulsion, Parker pushed aside the flap on the can, stuck her head in, and proceeded to be violently ill. Everyone in the immediate vicinity abandoned their tables, there was a cacophony of women shouting out in disgust, and a few others even clapped hands over their own mouths. When Parker had finished emptying her stomach, she stumbled away from the trash can and, dizzied, collapsed onto the floor, moaning and placing both hands over her midsection. The nearest guard, a Litchfield veteran who had seen just about everything at this point in his career, came forward, helping Parker up gently and leading her from the room.

 _Jesus fuck_ , Healy thought, looking down at his coffee and now feeling absolutely no desire to drink it. He turned to Red, hoping to hand the cup back to her, and saw that she was watching the scene just as intently as everyone else. But, instead of surprise or disgust, the Russian woman was looking on with a small but sinister smile.

She felt his eyes on her, and turned to meet his gaze, at which point her mouth settled into its regular lines. Red said nothing; she merely turned away, putting her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt and walking back to the kitchen, leaving Healy standing, dazed, in the middle of the cafeteria.

When he finally collected his senses, he left the large, noisy room and retreated to the relative peace and quiet of his office, where he sank heavily into his desk chair. There he sat, still clutching his coffee mug, for at least twenty minutes, staring off into space. The wheels in his head were turning, and things were starting to come together. When he couldn't stand to sit there and think any longer, he grabbed his walkie-talkie and paged one of the cafeteria guards.

"Donaldson. What's up?" the voice on the other end of the speaker asked.

"Hey, it's Healy. When the breakfast shift is over, I need you to send Reznikov to my office."

She came half an hour later, strolling confidently in without even knocking, sliding gracefully into a chair, and giving him an insolent look.

"What is it?" Red asked, "Have you revised your position on the Anderson situation?"

"No, I…umm…" Healy stammered. He was unsure of where to start; all he knew was that he needed to deal with this as soon as possible, before it got out of hand.

Red sighed impatiently. "Well, then, what is it? I'd appreciate it if you could make this quick; my back is still hurting me, and I would really like to go to my bunk and lie down."

"Fine," Healy said, the problem taken care of for him, "I need for you to stop poisoning your fellow inmates."

The flash of fear in Red's eyes made Healy feel just the slightest twinge of triumph. However, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and she was her usual unruffled self.

"I don't know what you mean," she said haughtily, as if highly insulted by the accusation.

"Don't you?"

"No."

"Well, fine then, but, as your counselor, I feel I should remind you that causing harm to any of the other inmates here will get you sent to the SHU or to Max, and if you kill another inmate, well…"

Red nodded nonchalantly. "Noted," she replied, "Though I really didn't need the reminder. May I go now?" She didn't even wait for an answer before lifting herself from the chair.

"No," Healy stopped her. Red scowled, but sat back down and turned her attention to him.

"Look, Red," he said softly, "If you're having problems, you need to talk to me. The investigation into what happened to you still isn't closed. If you tell me who attacked you, they can still be punished."

Red said nothing; she merely looked away and pursed her lips.

"Was it Parker?" Healy asked. Red rolled her eyes, aware of how petty and childish she must look at this moment, but unable to meet the counselor's gaze.

"I told you," she said, cursing the thickness of her voice, "I have no idea." With that, she pushed her chair away from the desk, stood up with a sharp intake of breath as the vertebrae in her back re-aligned painfully, and then walked out of Healy's office.


	7. Creme Brulee

**A/N: Okay, so I'm jumping ahead a few years (almost a decade, in fact), mostly because I don't feel like we know enough about the years between Red's attack and the start of S1 for me to really imagine what (if anything) might have happened in that time frame, at least on the Realy front. So this is about 8 years into Red's sentence and two years before the first episode of S1, and now I'm (both directly and indirectly) bringing in some more characters from the show that you'll all recognize! Ooooooh drama!**

 _You and me are burning in the summertime._

 _I've said it before and I'll say it again:_

 _"I'm so happy we're just friends."_

 _\- "Creme Brulee" by Sonic Youth_

 **Chapter 7**

Red hadn't actually been asleep for the better part of an hour; she had merely been lounging, hazily, in the little nest that she had made of her uncomfortable prison cot, sliding back and forth between slumber and waking. This had always been her favorite way to wake up, coming to consciousness little by little while still holding onto dreams. It was, she'd thought since she was a girl, like traveling between two different worlds.

Nowadays, it helped her to forget where she was. For just a brief span of time, every now and then, she could pretend that she wasn't in a dormitory with thirty other women, listening to their snores and sobs and sleep talking. This morning, she could almost imagine that she was back home again, in the small but comfortable apartment that she shared with her family. There wasn't much room for Dmitri in her daydreams; there almost never was. Even when they were young and freshly engaged, Red had always known that she could give or take him and it wouldn't matter very much either way.

Her boys, though…she missed them every day. Reality threatened to close in and remind her that they weren't boys anymore. Even in here, she kept track of all of their birthdays, insisted that they come to visit on hers; she knew that they were no longer children. Yuri was twenty-three now, fully grown, taller than both of his parents. Vassily was a man now, too, or at least nearly there, and Maxim wasn't far behind.

Still, Red could remember how they had looked as children, as clearly as day. Sometimes, on days like today, when she could wake up naturally, she allowed herself to imagine that she was back home, in her own bed, with one small son curled up on each side of her. They had all slept with her like that when they were little; Yuri and Vassily because they had nightmares, and Maxim because, possibly, she'd put off forcing him into his own bed the way she had done with his brothers. Red still didn't fault herself for that. Dmitri used to say it would make Maxim soft and that their youngest was too much of a mama's boy, but Red knew that she would never have any more children, and she'd wanted to keep her baby a baby for as long as she could.

 _Whatever I am now_ , Red reflected, _I was a good mother_. Her thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of her alarm clock, which she quickly reached over her head to silence. Where she had been half-asleep before, she was now wide awake, or at least as awake as she could be without a cup of coffee. She pushed all thoughts of her sons from her mind, for now, anyway. She could lock herself up in her office later and cry over the loss of them all she wanted. For now, though, there was breakfast to be cooked.

She groaned as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her feet landing on the cold floor. Red barely noticed; the pain in her back was too intense for her to focus on anything else. She was used to it now. She had, after all, been living with it for the better part of eight years. It would never not bother her, though. Every shot of raw agony down her spine, even the slightest tug of her muscles or pinprick of her nerves, reminded her of how her back had gotten that way to begin with, and made her want to scream and weep and punch walls.

Sometimes, though, she was grateful for it. Her fucked-up back also served as a reminder of a battle survived, an enemy conquered, and a lesson hard learned. She still smiled, sometimes, at the memory of how long it had taken Vee to realize that she wasn't just sick; her food was being spiked. And it still pleased Red to think of her old rival, during the last few months of her stay, eating her microwave ramen meals in the common room alone and knowing that there was absolutely nothing she could do about it now, unless she wanted to set off a full-on war that she had no chance of winning. Vee had possessed the brawn, but Red had the brains, and that always counted for more in the grand scheme of things.

Red had proven that she was a force to be reckoned with, not just to Vee and her gang, or to the rest of the prison, but to herself as well. That knowledge had kept her alive, both literally and figuratively. It had sustained her and made her what she was today. Sure her kingdom was nothing more than a tumbledown, cheaply-built and badly-run prison in the middle of bumfuck upstate New York, but it was hers nonetheless, and she was the uncontested queen of it.

The Russian woman dressed hurriedly, put on her makeup and spiked up her hair. She had just had it cut a few weeks ago, shorter than she'd ever worn it before, almost in a pixie cut but not quite. She'd hated it at first; if she were a lesser woman, she might have cried at the sight of herself in the mirror. However, with the help of a little gel and contraband hairspray, she was making it work, and she actually liked the way she could spike it up around her face, like a fire-engine-colored lion's mane. It wouldn't win her any beauty contests, but it was scary as hell, and that was exactly the look Red went for.

She made her way to the kitchen, where she found that Norma, an even earlier riser than Red herself, had already started breakfast. Eggs and biscuits were cooking, and everyone was on time (a rarity even with how tightly Red ran things; her staff, after all, were still just a bunch of little girls with little to no respect for authority) and busy. Wonderful. Much as she loved to cook, Red also sometimes enjoyed the days when her role was merely supervisory, especially in the mornings.

She made herself a cup of coffee and then stood off to one side, watching everyone work and occasionally barking out an order, but mostly just enjoying her beverage. In a bit she would begin lunch prep; breakfast was the easiest meal of the day and practically cooked itself, but everything else required a bit more work. For now, though, she was fine with watching. As her eyes scanned the kitchen and the caffeine from her drink penetrated her brain, Red noticed that someone in the room wasn't doing anything.

The offender was a young girl of medium height, with wild blonde hair and a slender figure beneath the over-sized orange jumpsuit she wore to make herself look bigger. _Fragile, too_ , Red thought. Having spent most of last week in the bathroom holding that girl's hair back as she puked and steadying her while she shook and sweated, Red knew exactly how fragile she was.

"What are you doing here?" Red asked, softly but forcefully.

Nicky Nichols was still unsure of herself, and didn't really know exactly where she stood with the Russian woman. All she knew was that she liked Red, and Red seemed inclined to be nice to her and to look out for her, and goddamn did Nicky need someone watching her. She had only been clean for a few days; she wasn't yet used to thinking on her own, without heroin, but she knew enough to recognize that she couldn't do this by herself.

"I…uhh…I don't have my job assignment yet," she said, her voice still husky from the strain that nonstop vomiting had put on her throat.

"And this is my problem how?" asked Red.

Nicky shrugged. "I don't know. I just thought, you know, I could come down here and lend a hand."

Red strolled up to her, until she and Nicky were only about a foot apart, and stared into the young woman's eyes, severely but not maliciously.

"Unless you're assigned to the kitchen, you're out of bounds," Red explained, "And you and I will both get shit if I let you stay. Besides, I don't let anyone touch anything in this kitchen without training them first. Go on and enjoy not having a job while you can. Read a book or something; it will be good for you."

Nicky nodded, then turned to leave, throwing a doleful glance back at Red as she walked away. For the rest of the breakfast shift and all through lunch prep, Red contemplated whether or not she should have her newest daughter assigned to the kitchen. This one, Red knew, needed a lot of looking after, and under those circumstances, what could be better for her than spending most of her days not only with Red, but with a whole host of others who would watch her? Then again, she suspected that Nicky would be a disaster in the kitchen. Cooking was mostly about waiting forever for something to be done, and sometimes screwing up recipes beyond repair or throwing a bunch of things together hoping for ambrosia and instead getting metaphorical dog turds. Red doubted that Nicky had either the patience or the tenacity.

Still, by the time everything was cleaned up for breakfast and her time was finally her own, Red had her mind made up. She went to Healy's office immediately, knowing that he was Nicky's counselor as well as her own. Technically, the choice of job assignments was his and his alone, but this wouldn't be the first time Red requested someone for her kitchen and got exactly what she wanted.

Even after all of these years, Healy still favored her. She knew why, though she never acknowledged it and rarely stopped to think about it. In spite of that, she was still more than willing to use his favor to her advantage. She had been here for a lot of years, and had four more left to go, and if she hadn't used her place in Healy's good graces from time to time, her stay would have been barren and miserable indeed.

She reached his office and knocked on his closed door, but got no answer, even after knocking again. Puzzled, she reached for the doorknob, tried to turn it, and found that it wouldn't move. Sighing in frustration, she went a couple of offices down, knocking on Caputo's door. The balding man opened up, frowning when he saw her. Red knew that the captain of the guards barely tolerated her, and the feeling was mutual, but at the moment, she was on a mission, and she didn't care.

"Red," Caputo said sarcastically, "To what do I owe the _pleasure_ of this visit?"

Red bit back the rude remark that rose on her tongue. She had learned, over the years, that battles had to be picked and chosen, and there was no need to piss Caputo off for no reason.

"I'm looking for Healy," she said matter-of-factly, "I'm having an issue with the kitchen."

Caputo snorted. "Aren't you always? Well, as much as I'd absolutely love to point you in his direction, Healy's not here today. He's actually going to be out for the next week or so."

"The next week? Why?" Red asked. She knew absolutely nothing of Healy's personal life except that he didn't really seem to have one; he never took days off, much less weeks. The man even worked holidays.

"Well, Healy's on his honeymoon," replied Caputo.

Red's eyebrows knit together, and she stared at Caputo, unable to process his words. "Healy" and "honeymoon" in the same sentence? Surely not.

"His what?" Red asked.

"Yeah, see, that's exactly what I said," Caputo answered, "But apparently it's true. Healy found himself a little wifey and she and him are taking off on a cruise to the Bahamas. Lucky bastard. For the cruise, I mean; not the marriage. You know how long it's been since I had a decent vacation?"

"Not as long as it's been for me, I'd bet," replied Red. Her voice, for some reason, sounded dull even to her own ears, but Caputo barely noticed, lost as he was in his own thoughts. "Well, thank you. You've been _so_ helpful." She began to walk off, but then added, as an afterthought, "Mr. Caputo."

She went back to the kitchen, entering her office and locking the door behind her. That, of course, didn't mean much, since the door was just a fence that anyone could see through. But the cafeteria, for now, was empty, and it wasn't unusual for Red to come here when she needed somewhere quiet to read. The guards knew this and wouldn't bother her.

She sat in her chair, picked up the book that she'd left open on the desk, and tried to read, but couldn't pay attention to the words. Telling herself that she was just restless, she got out her calendar and took up a pen, fully intending to plan out the next week's menu. She got to Monday before giving up on that, too, and then sat and pondered just what in the hell was wrong with her.

 _Healy_. _Honeymoon_. Healy had gotten married, and she'd had no idea it was happening. Red told herself that the last bit was what bothered her so much. After all, why shouldn't it? He was the first friend that she'd made here, long before she had a family or anything approximating one. He had always been good to her, and she supposed that, though they weren't close, they were on friendly terms, at least as much as they could be in their respective positions. It only happened once in a blue moon, but she did sometimes go into his office asking for something and then end up hanging around for a half hour or so just talking. She would have thought that he'd have mentioned something, and couldn't fathom why he hadn't.

 _Yes_ , Red thought, _he should have told me_. She convinced herself that she was angry about this smallest of facts and that this, combined with the sheer strangeness of it, was why she was so out of sorts now. That had to be it.


	8. It Matters to Me

_When we don't talk_

 _When we don't touch_

 _When it doesn't feel like we're even in love_

 _How can I make you see?_

 _It matters to me._

 _"It Matters to Me" - Faith Hill_

 **Chapter 8**

Sam scrunched his eyes shut as the morning sun glared through the slit where the curtains met. He woke up slowly, allowing himself a few moments to come to semi-lucidity before he rolled over. To his pleasant surprise, he felt the warmth and solidness of a body next to his. All he had ever wanted was someone to wake up beside but, now that he had it, he still couldn't adjust.

As he stared at the back of his wife's blonde head, Sam reflected on how extraordinary it was that she was here, in his bed, with him. This time last year, if someone had told him that he would be in a relationship of any kind, much less married to a gorgeous and exotic goddess like Katya, he would have laughed in their face. And yet, here he was.

He knew that certain people might frown at his and Katya's story. It was certainly unconventional. Some people, of course, might express disapproval about the fact that he'd had to pay to bring his wife and her mother over to the US from their native country. Sam, however, didn't care. He had known this woman for less than a year, but he was certain that he loved her, and he was happy.

He had talked to a few women online before connecting with Katya, and, although Sam himself acknowledged that he was a bit desperate, none of those other girls had managed to keep his attention. Katya, on the other hand, well, she was someone he could talk to. He made her laugh, and it had been so very long since any woman had even so much as chuckled at his jokes. The only one who came close was Red, and most of the time all he got out of her was a half-smile.

As always, Sam felt the familiar twinge of shame that always came when he thought about Red. He didn't know why, but it felt wrong somehow, now that he was married. Of course, that was ridiculous. It was true that he'd once had just the slightest crush on the Russian inmate, but that was more than eight years ago, and he was over it. Nowadays, he rarely saw her when he was at work, and they were only friends by the loosest possible definition of the term.

That was what he told himself, anyway. He never spoke to anyone else about Red, unless he had to write a letter to her lawyer or advocate to Caputo on behalf of the kitchen staff. Sam thought that Caputo might have an inkling of what he had once felt for the inmate; his boss certainly complained enough about the favors that Sam constantly did for her. Still, he had no proof and, save for a few of the Litchfield lifers, no one was around from those early days, so there was no one at the prison who remembered the soft spot he had once had for Reznikov.

As such, it was easy for him to convince himself that he felt nothing for her. If he went easier on her than he did the other inmates, and if he sometimes stretched his neck out for her, it was because he had been her counselor for almost a decade; they had a completely businesslike rapport. Besides, they had been heading towards being friends once, and were still on good terms, so of course he was willing to help her out whenever she needed it.

So, then, why did he look at his wife while thinking about his counselee and feel that he was betraying Katya in some way? It was stupid, and Sam admonished himself for it. Still internally scolding, he rolled over slightly, until he was flush against Katya's back, and kissed her temple. He could feel arousal welling up just from the touch of her skin, which served as a testament to how attracted he was to her, and also how long it had been since they were intimate.

They had been married for only a few months, but already the sex was becoming much less frequent than Sam would have liked. It had started on their honeymoon, when Katya had gotten food poisoning and made him sleep on the sofa in their suite on the cruise ship because, as she said, she was "too disgusting and sick" for him to be near. Various other mishaps had prevented lovemaking since then; either he was busy and exhausted from work, or she was on her period, or she had a headache and just didn't feel like it. Sam was beginning to go crazy from having this beautiful woman so close at hand yet so inaccessible, and he was hoping that he could remedy the situation now.

Sam trailed his lips down to her cheek, then her jaw and neck, hoping to wake Katya up gently and lovingly. At last, he heard her sigh, and then she moved beside him, turning around to look at him. When they came face-to-face, though, she offered him no smile. Instead, she was scowling so fiercely that Sam recoiled and retreated to his side of the bed.

"Sam?" she asked, her voice still groggy from sleep, "What you doing?"

"I…" He found himself stuttering, and hated it. "I was just…well, I thought we could…you know…"

Katya rolled her eyes and turned back over, away from him. "I am sleepy, Sam," she said, "All I want is to go back asleep."

Sam nodded. "Okay. Umm…I'm sorry."

With that, he slid out of the bed. She was right; it was too early in the morning for him to be trying to wake her. Besides, he had work today; he probably needed to get some coffee in him and take a shower. There likely wouldn't have been much time for intimacy, anyway. That was what he told himself as he trudged to the bathroom and turned the bathtub faucet on.

Despite his efforts to placate himself, though, Sam couldn't help but feel a pang of disappointment. _No_ , he thought as he stepped underneath the shower head's spray, _not disappointment_. What he felt was sadness and, for the first time, a bit of doubt about how quickly he'd entered into this marriage, how little time he had known his wife beforehand.

She had seemed different online, warmer, quicker to laugh, more sensual. Sam believed that he'd found the perfect woman, and hadn't hesitated to propose to her, despite the fact that they had never met in person. He'd thought that it was true love.

 _It is_ , he told himself sternly. He loved Katya, and he knew she loved him. He supposed that she was just under so much stress. She had become someone's wife and moved to a new country in such a short period of time, and she was still struggling with the English language and the culture shock. _Once she gets settled in some more_ , Sam thought, _everything will be fine then_.

He almost managed to convince himself, but he couldn't quite make that conviction translate over to his facial expression. When he looked into the mirror after getting out of the shower, Sam thought that he looked sad, and also found that, when he tried to smile, it looked artificial. His smile didn't even come close to reaching his eyes, through which he could still see the gleam of sadness.


	9. Sad Eyes

_Every day here you come walking._

 _I told my tongue I don't do much talking._

 _You say you're happy and you're doing fine._

 _Well go ahead baby, I got plenty of time._

 _Sad eyes never lie._

 _"Sad Eyes" - Bruce Springsteen_

 **Chapter 9**

Red didn't realize, until the day she walked by Healy's office and saw the light on, that she had unconsciously been looking for it. Really, after recovering from the initial shock of being told that he was on his honeymoon, she hadn't thought much about Healy at all. He was, truthfully, non-essential for her day-to-day existence. Mainly, she was annoyed that he hadn't been there to hear her demands on the one day that she'd needed to speak to him.

Really, though, that may have been the best thing for all concerned. In the week since Red had tried and failed to get her newest daughter assigned to kitchen staff, Nicki had done nothing but hang around during meal prep. The more she got to know the girl, the more Red realized that Nicki had no business anywhere near a kitchen, and the more grateful she was that Healy hadn't been there to take her request.

 _Anyway_ , Red reflected as she stirred butter into the large pot of mashed potatoes she was preparing, _now I don't have to go to him for anything_. She wasn't going to lie to herself and say that her heart hadn't leapt, just the slightest bit, when she saw his office light on that morning. That, though, was force of habit by now, she told herself. In the past week, seeing the darkness of Healy's office through the closed blinds had always made her mind jump back to Nicki. In the first days the train of thought was: _he's still not there, remember to talk to him about Nicki when he comes back_ , but, of late, it was more, _he's still not there, oh well, I dodged a bullet, if only I could actually ban Nicki from the kitchen_.

Still, she found herself unable to stop thinking about that light. She had finished The Great Gatsby just days before, and couldn't help but think, as she focused on her left hand rhythmically stirring, of Gatsby's green light at the end of the dock. The light in Healy's office had almost been like that to her, vacillating back and forth between being an alluring promise and a bitter reminder of something that wasn't really there.

Red had to snort at that. Stupid. She was no romantic; she was strictly a pragmatist, and, even if she had been the kind to give in to such ridiculous fantasies, Sam Healy was certainly not her Daisy Buchanan. Half the time, the man was all but invisible to her, and the other half, she only liked him because it was easy to charm him into giving her whatever she wanted. _God, I need to stop taking Norma's book suggestions_ , she thought.

"Shit!" someone yelled from across the kitchen. Red, lost in her own world, jumped, and then turned around to scold whomever it was that had shaken her out of her thoughts.

Gina Murphy, another one of her daughters, was kicking the stove across the way.

"What are you doing?" Red asked in a scolding tone, "You trying to fuck that thing up even more than it already is?"

Gina looked chastised, but still managed to shrug. "I don't think that's possible, Red. It won't turn on."

Red sighed, turned off the heat under her potatoes, and crossed the kitchen. "What do you mean it won't turn on?" she asked.

Gina demonstrated for her, turning all of the knobs, waiting a moment, and then putting her hand directly onto the burner. She repeated it for each of the four burners, and then looked at Red matter-of-factly. Red held her own hand over the metal plate, and felt nothing. No heat, nothing whatsoever.

"Is it plugged in? Possibly someone's fucking with us," Red said.

"Everyone knows not to mess with your kitchen, Red. Anyway, I already checked. All systems are go. Or should be. It just doesn't fucking work."

Red sighed. "Wonderful."

She stalked out of the kitchen and down the hallway to Healy's office, banging her fist loudly on the door. When his voice beckoned her to come in, Red ignored the leap of her heart, set her face into its most severe expression, and walked in.

She thought she saw a trace of a smile on Healy's face, and fought not to meet it with one of her own. As his eyes scanned her and then settled on her head, the smile faded.

"Hey!" he said, "You…umm…you cut your hair."

Red scowled, and then remembered that she'd changed her hairstyle just before he'd left. "Yes," she replied. Healy clearly didn't like what she'd done with it, but she couldn't possibly have cared less. It wasn't as though she would be competing in any Miss Felon beauty pageants, and anyway, what she did with her hair was none of his damn business.

"Well…umm…have a seat," Healy said. Red did so, taking a moment to look him over as he had her. She frowned slightly. Something was off about him, and she couldn't tell what. He seemed…she didn't know. Not as he should have been.

Before, she supposed he had been a bit depressed. Red honestly hadn't taken much note of his appearance or condition before, but even the world's most oblivious person could see that Healy's general appearance and demeanor were not that of a man who was happy with his life. She had known that the first time she met him, years and years ago, but he had gotten worse.

Red had expected, though, that he would come back from his honeymoon overjoyed and re-energized, possibly annoyingly so. He'd given her only a smattering of evidence to believe this, but Red always suspected that, if he were content with his life, Sam Healy could have been a truly brilliant and jovial man, the kind of happy-go-lucky person Red had hated all her life.

Now, though, he seemed much the same as before, and that was odd. He didn't seem like a man who had just gotten back from a honeymoon, or someone who was madly in love. Not that Red would really know what that looked like. She'd been married for more than twenty years, but never been wildly in love, and she and Dmitri didn't have a honeymoon, either. They had married, gotten pregnant, and moved to New York, all in less than a year.

"So, Red, what brings you in today?" Healy asked.

"I have a broken stove in my kitchen," Red replied.

Healy chuckled bitterly, shook his head and leaned back in his chair. "Well," he said, "I guess I really am back."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Red asked, frowning and fixing Healy in her severe gaze.

"Nothing," he replied, looking away, "Nothing at all." He reached into his desk and took out a pen and a form. "Tell me what's wrong with the appliance and I'll see about getting someone out to fix it."

She did and, when she had finished, Healy looked up from the form and met her gaze. Something in his eyes knocked all the annoyance and judgment right from Red's face. No, he wasn't happy. She could see it in his eyes, and, despite herself, she felt the same pity for him that she always did.

Red shifted in her chair, uncomfortable now, and tried to dispel the tension by speaking. "So, I hear you got married."

Healy nodded, and half-smiled at her seeming interest. "I did, yeah."

Red's eyes went to his desk, and she noticed that there was a new picture frame there. It was, in fact, the only one there among all his scattered books and papers and various knick-knacks. She grabbed it, turned it around, and looked at the face of the woman in the photo. Red had never seen this woman before, but she knew right away that she was Slavic; her features betrayed that much. Besides, Red had seen a million just like her back home in Russia. This was the kind of woman she'd always hated. Blonde, tall, thin, beautiful in a way that Red never had been and never would be. The kind of woman who wasn't fit for anything much besides marrying some man and decorating his house…

Suddenly, all the details clicked into place in Red's mind. Slavic woman, obviously nothing more than a pretty toy, husband just married to her but already unhappy…Red understood everything. She had known plenty of girls who did the mail-order thing, girls who looked just like Healy's new wife. She'd never seen one of those marriages played out, but could only imagine that they never really ended well, considering the kinds of girls who usually went into those arrangements and also the kind of men who sought them out.

She bit her lip to keep from articulating any of this. Instead, she placed the photo back on the desk and did her best to smile at Healy.

"Well," she said, "If this is her, then she's lovely."

Healy nodded. "Yep. That's her. Her name's Katya."

"Pretty," Red replied, "I'm sure you two will be very happy. Well, I still have to go cook dinner, with one stove now, so I'll see my way out." She stood up and walked to the door, but paused in the entryway, still thinking of what a hard road Healy probably had ahead of him, and how there was no way he could possibly know what he'd gotten himself into.

"Thank you, Healy," she said softly, turning around to look at him, "Thanks for your help with the stove situation."


	10. Love Changes

_When love changes in the flash of an eye_

 _It leaves people burning by the side of the road._

 _You stand there, you've got nothing to hold._

 _For the first time, you are alone._

 _"Love Changes" by Stevie Nicks_

 **Chapter 10**

Sitting across the cramped visiting room table from Dmitri, Red struggled to recall exactly when her husband had become a stranger to her. She supposed it happened when she stopped being able to remember his face. Not his face as it was now, the too-big nose, the blue eyes that were and always had been the only handsome thing about him, the wrinkles around the mouth and etched into the forehead, all of it topped by a fringe of retreating dark-brown hair. That face, the face that Dmitri wore now, was nearly the same as it had been twelve years ago when she got put away.

The face that she couldn't call up now was the one from their youth. Red gave her husband a small, tight smile, then closed her eyes for a moment, trying to force herself back more than thirty years, to Arkhangelsk. It was summer, and in her youth Red had always thought it too hot, because she didn't yet know what warm weather could really feel like. She remembered the bakery, her hair in its tight auburn bun, her back straight as she passed a broom over the floor, not twisted and shot through with pain as it was now.

And she remembered Dmitri's eyes. She remembered his eyes burning into her own as he talked about America with the only small spark of true passion she'd ever seen in him. His eyes on her while he watched her sweep and serve pastries and clear tables, almost every day until Red got tired of it and told him to either make his move or stop bothering her. His mild eyes as they made frenzied but humdrum love in the backseat of the car he'd borrowed from a friend to take her out in.

The eyes were always the same, but the face changed. Sometimes the man in her memories was a faceless outline, and sometimes he looked the same way Dmitri looked now, but that wasn't right and Red knew it, and she was ashamed of the fact that she could not remember her husband as he was all those years ago.

"Galya?" His voice cut through her incomplete memories. " _Ty v poryadke_?"

"Huh? Oh, _da_. Yes. I'm just tired."

She tried to smile at Dmitri again, but the smile didn't reach her eyes, and he noticed. His hand reached across the table to take hers, and she gave it willingly, enjoying the feeling as his thumb caressed her palm. Red told herself that it was because she wanted his touch. This was, after all, the man she had married, the man she loved. She never had been good at denial, though.

Her reaction was less desire for this man in particular and more a product of never being touched, except for the hugs from her family every two weeks on visiting days and the occasional embrace from one of her adopted daughters. At this point, she'd been without human contact for so long that if a man, any goddamned man, brushed up against her shoulder she'd probably climax on the spot.

After that grim realization, she could only muddle through her visitation with Dmitri, and afterwards, she went back to her cube to reflect. It hit her like a shotgun blast, the realization that she no longer loved her husband. Always, she had loved him. She had never desired him, she'd married him for selfish reasons, because she wanted to go to America and knew she'd never get there alone. But she'd loved him, in her own way. It was a soft, behind-the-scenes love that lived not in their bed or in any kind of tempestuous and primal need for one another, but in the things that he did for her, how he was with their boys, the way his voice softened when he said her name.

But she didn't feel it anymore. Red supposed that she hadn't for a while, but this was simply the first time she'd allowed herself to know it. Because, now that she did know it, she didn't know what to do. It didn't matter in here; her family was always the anchor that kept her fixed and steady, and she still had her boys. Nothing in the world could make her stop loving them.

But they were men, all of them now, men with their own lives and homes and problems. When she got out, she wouldn't be going home to them. There were fewer than three years left on her sentence, which meant that in fewer than three years, she'd be back with Dmitri, and she would have to see him every day, because she'd nowhere else to go. Her home, her children, her market…everything was tied up in him.

Red ran a hand through her eggplant-colored hair, then looked up. Her best friend, her silent shadow, had appeared at the front of her cube without Red's even realizing it. This was their late-afternoon ritual; it was time to get up, stop feeling sorry for herself, and turn her sights to the task at hand. There was dinner to cook, a prison to feed, and, with a sigh, Red lifted herself from her cot and followed Norma out of the dorm. If she had nothing else, then at least she could rest assured that she had a purpose, and people who depended on her and appreciated her.

...

Red, the pockets of her hoodie filled with yogurt cups and her feet feeling as though they might fall off, approached the table. Taking a brief look around and seeing the guards otherwise engaged, she took a yogurt from her pocket and slid it towards Nicky, then another for Yoga Jones and one for the nun, as well. Feeling as though her knees were going to give out, she collapsed on the table bench near Yoga Jones, stretching leisurely. She barely heard the chatter of the other women, but saw, out of the corner of her eye, the lumbering figure approaching.

"Hey, Red," Big Boo said, "Got one of those for me?"

When Red turned to the other woman, she wore her world-famous bitch face. "You got what I asked you for?"

Big Boo, of course, did not, and Red quickly sent her on her way. _Fucking ingrate_ , she thought. She'd been on her feet for two hours preparing dinner, she was already having a bad day; the last thing she needed was any of Boo's bullshit.

"How hard is it to get me a board from the woodshop?" Red asked no one in particular, "Ugh, people!"

Coming out of her own world, Red turned to the table at large, taking note of the unfamiliar face. The new inmate was too blonde, too pretty, too delicate-looking for Red's taste, but Nicky had obviously taken a liking to her, so how bad could she be?

"Who's this?" she asked.

"Oh, this is Chapman. She's new. Self-surrender. Thinks she's fancy," said Nicky.

Red nodded, then stood, handing over the last of the yogurt cups she'd smuggled in her hoodie. It was gratifying, to see the way the new girl's face lit up at this simple act of kindness. _At least I still have this_ , Red thought. At the very least, she could still provide for people, nourish people, make people happy and earn their gratitude in return.

And then, Chapman said it. "The food here is disgusting," she whispered confidentially.

Red felt her face fall. In the second it took for her to process Chapman's words, she realized that she was too sad now, too damn miserable, even to be angry. All she felt was numb. With not another word, Red stood up from the table. Almost as an afterthought, she paused near Yoga Jones, leaning over the slim woman to face the girl who had, however innocently, insulted her and driven the final nail into the coffin of Red's heart.

"Honey," she said, "I know you just got here, so you don't know what's what. But I'm going to tell you. You don't like the food? It's no problem."

With that, she left Chapman looking awestruck, and Nicky shaking her head.

Red made a beeline for her kitchen, passing the serving station and the girls who were cleaning off the last of the dishes from dinner and going straight for the freezer. She walked in almost without thinking, and found it too cold; she was shivering in just under a minute. But this was the only place in the prison where she could be alone right now, truly by herself without anyone interrupting her.

She sat down on a crate that had once held produce, looking down between her knees at the logo on the plastic. Neptune. Fuck them.

Her head fell into her hands, and just for a split second, Red thought that she might very well cry. But no tears came; her body just shook, whether from the chill or from her combined anger and sadness, she didn't know.


	11. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

**Author's Note:** **Hey kids! Yes, I am back after a long, long dry spell. I have had so many things go epically wrong in my life since the last time I wrote, but things have mellowed out and I'm doing my annual OITNB re-watch and getting pumped for S5. I don't have much Realy hope for this coming season because (year-old spoilers) Sam's committed himself; however, Michael Harney has confirmed that he will be back, so I'm not giving up on Realy yet. I will go down with this ship, you guys, and I'll continue writing my fics until Jenji Kohan and the OITNB writers either crush Realy once and for all (yes, I know, sacrilege) or decide to do the right thing and let Healy and Red end up together.**

 _Do I have to tell the story_

 _Of a thousand rainy days since we first met?_

 _It's a big enough umbrella_

 _But it's always me that ends up getting wet._

 _Every little thing she does is magic._

 _Everything she do just turns me on._

 _"Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" - The Police_

 **Chapter 11**

" _Dobroye utro, dorogoy_ ," Sam greeted, wrapping his arms around his wife's waist and pulling her close to him. His heart sank when, instead of melting into his embrace as he had expected, Katya's body simply went limp, and her expression in the bathroom mirror showed no change from the vacant look she always wore while putting on her makeup.

She opened her mouth to speak, and he was fully prepared to hang on her every word, expecting that she would at least wish him a good morning back. Instead, her mouth flattened into a thin line, and she simply said, with as much enthusiasm as if she had been reading off her grocery list, " _Dorogoy_ is for man, Sam. For woman, is _dorogaya_."

She meant it as a slight, and Sam felt it as such. He didn't like being slighted, and he felt the familiar anger beginning to rise, but managed to tamp it down. After all, he was the one who had walked in on her doing her makeup and disrupted her morning routine; she was probably just annoyed over that.

"Dorogaya, then," he corrected himself, letting go of her and leaning against the counter, watching Katya as she ran her mascara brush over her lashes. "You know," he said, trying to recapture the little bit of attention she had shown him while he held her, "our anniversary is coming up in a few days."

The mascara wand went back into its tube, one of Katya's delicate, long-fingered hands caressed her hair, and her face, in the mirror, remained grim.

"I know," she replied.

Sam contemplated letting this go, leaving her alone and saving this conversation for another time. Obviously she wasn't in the mood for conversation right now, and that was fine. Still, though, he couldn't help himself.

"I thought we might go out to dinner. You know, to celebrate. Where would you like to go? I'll take you anywhere."

Katya grabbed a brush off of the counter, dipped it into her blush and then ran it over one elegant cheekbone.

"I don't want to go out," she said. Sam couldn't tell if she was talking to him, or to her own reflection.

"Oh, come on," he replied, "You love going out. You're always begging me to take you somewhere." There was a warning edge in his voice, and he felt genuine remorse when he saw the brief flash of concern on his wife's face. That, though, was gone almost as soon as it had appeared.

"Mama said she would cook for us," said Katya, swiping her brush over the other cheek, "She wants to."

Sam relaxed then. He tried to smile, and was alarmed to find that he'd been clenching his jaw without even realizing it. Having his mother-in-law cook an anniversary dinner wasn't what he'd had in mind. Katya spent more time with her mother than she did with him, and often, if he wanted to do anything with his wife, Pavla had to be there, too. It was maddening, at times, but Sam tried to be understanding. And so he accepted the idea of sitting down to his and Katya's anniversary dinner with his mother-in-law as gracefully as he could.

"Oh…well, then, that's…that's great. I'll look forward to it," he said, bending towards Katya to kiss her, lightly, at the top of her head. She didn't pull away from him, but she didn't gravitate towards him, either. She made no move to return his affectionate gesture or meeting it with one of her own, and her face, reflected back at him like an accusation, was impassive.

That face haunted him all day at work; he thought about how unresponsive Katya had been towards him as he did his paperwork, played the exchange over and over in his mind, picking it apart and wondering what he could have possibly done differently. That world-weary, closed-off expression hardly left Katya's face these days, and Sam couldn't help but wonder what he had done to put it there, and how he could get her to smile at him again, as she had when they were first married. Hell, even then she hadn't been a big smiler, but she'd done it more often in those days. What, Sam asked himself, could have changed?

He looked into his coffee cup for answers, as though hoping to read some kind of omen in the swirl of the creamer. There was nothing there, though; the cup was almost empty. He lifted the mug, drank that last sip down and then stood up from his desk, bound for the cafeteria. Red would be prepping lunch by now, but she kept a pot of coffee brewed at all times. It was a waste of resources and a special privilege that the kitchen staff ought not to have been allowed, but every single CO in Litchfield was a gigantic caffeine addict, and they were all willing to look the other ways as long as there was a mug for them whenever they asked.

Upon entering the kitchen, Healy was greeted by the sight of a mammoth new appliance, currently being relieved of its blue shrink-wrap by two of the kitchen workers. It was the new freezer that Healy had had to pull all kinds of strings to get for Red. It had seemed to make sense at the time; she had, after all, threatened to turn her kitchen duties over to another inmate. That would have thrown the whole situation into chaos, and so Healy had gone along and made all the requisite appeals to the higher-ups.

Captain Caputo stood off to one side, watching the unveiling of the new freezer with disdain. Fuck, Healy thought. Caputo was the last person he wanted to speak to right now. He made his way over to the coffee pot, taking his time filling his mug and adding all the bells and whistles to his drink, hoping that the other man would be gone by the time he turned around.

No such luck; Caputo was opening a fruit cup at a leisurely pace, and his eyes met Healy's across the room, leaving the counselor no choice but to acknowledge him.

"That new freezer cost more than my car," Caputo said by way of greeting, "Freon leak, huh?"

"Most likely," replied Healy, his palms sweating and the need to justify himself overwhelming him, "You know…huffers, addicts…anything to get high."

Caputo scoffed at that, dismissing Healy's justification out of hand and following the other man's line of sight straight to the Russian woman who was whisking eggs into a frying pan. A mesmerizing gesture, elegant in its simplicity and the nonchalance with which she performed it, like she had done it a million times before but was no less pleased with the process than she'd been the first time she ever accomplished it. _Like Katya with her makeup_ , Healy thought; but no, that wasn't an apt comparison. There was no artistry in that because Katya performed the act with no passion; her face was mute, only a canvas. Watching Red whisk and pour and stir, though, was like watching a dance, precisely choreographed but still new and exciting each time. There was vitality in this woman's work.

Through the haze of his thoughts, Healy heard Caputo say, "Even you gotta know when you're getting' played."

Healy watched him go, trying to think of the perfect retort but—story of his life—not quick enough to defend himself. Caputo disappeared, and Healy turned his attention back to Red, who, at that moment, looked up from her work and caught his eye. She was no more smiley than his wife had been that morning, but she did acknowledge him, a gesture so small as to be imperceptible to anyone else, but Healy saw it, and he appreciated it, nodding back at her before leaving the cafeteria, feeling oddly as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. At least he had managed to make one woman happy today.


	12. If Then

**Author's Note:** **This chapter takes place in S1, episode 5, "The Chickening"**

 _If you whisper I'll hear_

 _And if you go I will know._

 _Your effort to disappear_

 _Is no match for an old scarecrow._

 _My light cuts through the fog_

 _And I can see it in your eyes._

 _What you're hiding I will find._

 _You can't hide this time._

 _"If Then" - Bad Veins_

 **Chapter 12**

Red refused to look at him. Her eyes were intense, penetrating, her gaze withering, but, for now, all her rage was focused on the wall behind Healy's head. Healy tried to plot this conversation out in his mind, tried to think of some strategy—any fucking strategy—for keeping it that way.

He told himself that it didn't matter if she was angry with him. After today, half of the goddamn prison would be mad at him. It was part of his job description—his least favorite part, but still—to tell the inmates things that they didn't want to hear, to dole out punishments and to be blamed and hated for it no matter how reasonable it was or what the inmate had done to deserve it. At this point in his career, he'd been cursed out and yelled at—and even, once, had his genitals threatened with a voodoo curse—enough times that he hardly even batted an eye at it.

But it was different with Red, and he hated that it was different, but there it was. He tried to think back over the whole course of the time she'd been here, the twelve years he'd known her, to see if he could remember her ever getting violently, screaming-and-spitting angry. Healy couldn't recall a single incident; he couldn't even picture her yelling at anyone, much less throwing punches.

Not that she never got angry. She was angry now. But when Red got angry, she got even, and Healy told himself that this was what he was afraid of. He ate her food, he drank multiple cups of coffee from her kitchen almost every single day of his life. What did she have access to, what could she poison him with, if he punished her too harshly and upset her even further?

Healy tried to reassure himself that this was stupid. She was an inmate; he was, after all, the one in charge here. She was too smart to try and poison him. He thought back, years and years and years, to the incident in the kitchen with Parker, the fear, however fleeting, he'd seen in her eyes when she knew that he'd guessed what she was up to. It was one of the few trump cards he had with her, the fact that he knew she wasn't above poison and had done it before.

Besides, if he was being honest with himself, he knew that he wasn't afraid of retaliation, not really. He wasn't scared that she'd lace his food with anything. Just the thought of her being angry with him was enough to frighten him, and he didn't know why. They weren't friends anymore, not for years, if they ever had been to begin with. They rarely spoke. She would nod at him when their paths crossed in the hallway or the cafeteria, and she knew how to be just pleasant enough to get what she wanted from him without being chummy, and that was about it.

Still, Healy felt as though he'd be losing something, something important and irreplaceable, if he alienated Red, and so he chose to tread carefully. He shifted in his chair, removed his glasses and cleaned them with a cloth before putting them back on and turning to her, his face carefully neutral.

"Really, Red? The chicken again?" He kept his tone light, as though they were just friends having a conversation and he was just sneaking in some good-natured ribbing, but all this did was make her more sullen.

"Do you at least want to tell me your side of this whole crazy story?" Healy asked.

Red sighed, and did not take her eyes off the wall behind him. "No," she replied.

"Why not?"

"Because you won't listen to me either way," Red said, "So what's the damn point? I'm not going to beg you not to take away my visitation or not to send me to Seg or whatever the hell you're planning on doing, so just tell me my punishment and let me go."

She looked at him then, and in her blue eyes was a challenge, the same one he'd seen leveled against other Litchfield guards, but never directed at him. _Go ahead; break me. If you can._ Healy was unsettled by it, just like she knew he would be, and he was playing right into whatever game she had engaged him in, and was really in a bad way now because didn't know how to extract himself.

"I'm not going to send you to Seg, or take anything away," Healy said, "But I do want to make a deal with you."

Red scoffed; they both knew that whatever he had planned was no deal at all, because she almost certainly would have no choice in the matter. Still, he went on.

"I'm…uhh…I'm having…certain problems. At home. With my wife."

Healy could see the change in Red's demeanor as she tried to hold her tongue, no doubt biting back some kind of remark about little blue pills.

"It's…it's…umm…a language problem," he continued, fully aware that he had long ago surrendered the upper hand because he was the one sweating and fidgeting in his own chair, while Red just looked as though she was fighting laughter.

"So what do you want?" she asked, "Recommendations for a good Russian class, maybe my opinion on that whole Rosetta Stone bullshit? Sorry, but there was none of that back when I was learning English. I had to do it all myself."

"No. I mean, I-I'm trying to…" Healy sighed. "Fuck it," he said, "What I want is to know if you'd agree to meet with her. And me, obviously I'd be there, too. I want her to be able to talk to me about, I don't know, anything that might be on her mind, that I might need to know, but she's not making any more headway with English than I am with Russian, so I think we might need a translator."

Red's mouth folded into a single, harsh little line as she thought this over, clearly not relishing the prospect and on the verge of asking if she could be sent to the box for a few days instead.

In a way, it was sweet, what he was proposing. He obviously cared a great deal about his wife's happiness, and Red supposed that was touching. Still, if he thought that she was going to be their go-between in some kind of weird United Nations/ _Handmaid's Tale_ bullshit arrangement…

"Sure," Red said, "And where would we all get together? Should I come over to your house for tea, or would you prefer to meet up at the Starbucks on Main?"

"I would bring her here. Obviously."

"Oh, I'm sure she'll love that. I don't know what your other dates have been like, but I'm sure this one will take the cake."

"Knock it off, Red," Healy said, "I could still send you down to the SHU. With the shit you pulled, you should consider yourself lucky that I'm giving you this option instead."

 _Oh, yeah, I'm a lucky, lucky girl_ , Red thought. To Healy, though, she only nodded her acquiescence.

"Sure. Fine. I have weighed my many, many options and decided, out of the goodness of my heart, to help you. Now, am I free to go?"

Healy nodded, making a dismissive motion with his hands and watching her stand up and head to the door.

"You know, this might be good for you, too," he said, just as her hand was on the doorknob, "It might be nice for you to have someone you can speak your own language with."

Red rolled her eyes. She had plenty of people she could speak Russian with. Dmitri visited her every two weeks, and her sons were fluent, too, whenever the little ingrates bothered to call their mother.

"Yes, who knows? I'm sure it'll be wonderful," Red replied. When she exited the room, she looked down the line of women who were still awaiting their own fates. She caught sight of Chapman, locked eyes with the younger woman, and narrowed her eyes and shook her head, pleased when she saw how the blonde inmate quailed under her gaze.


	13. How to Save a Life

_Where did I go wrong?_

 _I lost a friend_

 _Somewhere along in the bitterness_

 _And I would have stayed up with you all night_

 _Had I known how to save a life._

 _"How to Save a Life" - The Fray_

Red listened to Nicky's footsteps echoing on the linoleum, keeping her brave mask fixed in place until she heard the last of them. Once she was sure that the younger woman was gone, she allowed herself to slump in her chair, letting her body fall over her desk and putting her head in her hands. She didn't want to cry again, but tears were a luxury that she couldn't afford anywhere else but in this little office, in the middle of the night. Her body knew this, and it wasn't yet cried out, so Red just surrendered to it.

 _Fuck up_ , she said to herself, _this is your fault_. No matter what Nicky said about the drugs, and about her own part in all of this, no matter how they both pointed the finger directly at Mendez, Red knew that if she hadn't screwed up so profoundly, Trisha would still be alive now. That girl's blood was on her hands, and she would never be able to forgive herself.

Even worse, now, her whole family was vulnerable, and that was her fault, too. She talked a big game to Nicky, but she had no idea where to even start with getting rid of Mendez. It was a herculean task, and if she was honest with herself, Red didn't know whether or not she was up to it. She had no plans, and she couldn't make any, not right now, anyway, because her eyes were clouded over with tears and her nose was running and she was shaking all over, whether from grief or from fear or a wretched combination of both, she couldn't be sure.

She reached down to one of her desk drawers, opening it up and pulling out the slim bottle that she kept there always. She was greedy with her scotch, mostly because she didn't trust the junkie bitches in this place not to break into her office if they found out about it. Normally, she preferred to save it for special occasions, to share with Claudette or with Norma. Tonight, though. Tonight was most certainly not normal.

The truth was that Red was so tired of feeling. Most people thought that she was made of stone, because that was the image she worked so tirelessly to cultivate. Really, though, she was a bundle of raw emotion at all times, just like everyone else here. Grief over the loss of her outside life, mingled with the terror that always sat just below the surface in this place, was Red's default. Both of those things made her care too much. She cared about her kitchen because it was the only place where she felt even remotely normal, and about her girls because they were the only people she had to love, and even scary Russian kitchen bitches needed something to love.

Trisha's death was a reminder that it was dangerous to love, especially in here, where nobody was allowed to have anything nice or comforting. _It's dangerous to feel_ , Red thought, unscrewing the cap from the bottle, pressing it to her thin lips, and hoping that the alcohol would help.

The scotch seared her tongue and burned its way down her throat, but she didn't mind. It felt nice, cleansing, even. She took another sip, and then another, telling herself that she should stop. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had anything more than a few hurried sips from this very bottle; certainly it had been at least a decade since she'd been drunk. She used to handle her liquor well; she was Russian, after all, but now she had no idea what might happen, and the last thing she wanted or needed was to be supervising breakfast prep with her face in a garbage can.

Still, she didn't want to stop. She wasn't drunk enough yet; she still wanted to curl up in a corner and cry, so she raised the bottle to her mouth again, only to be stopped by the sound of footsteps. She thought, at first, that it was Nicky, unable to sleep and wanting to talk some more, but the gait was heavier and the pace more leisurely.

Red's heart raced as she realized that she was about to be busted by a CO, and she tried to lessen the damage by hastily stuffing the bottle back into her desk. She was just tipsy enough, though, for her motor functions to be impaired, and so, when the bulky shadow appeared in the doorway to her office, the bottle was only halfway in the drawer, and she was caught.

She looked in the CO's direction with wide eyes, flushed face, and some excuse already forming at the tip of her tongue, only to relax instantly when she saw that it was only Healy. He looked stern, and was obviously none too happy at having caught her, but if Red had to be busted by anyone, she was glad it was him.

"You're out of bounds, Red," Healy said, "Lights out was an hour ago. And what's in that bottle?"

"Umm…apple juice?" she replied, grimacing when she heard how her words slurred together. She sounded drunk even to herself, so she was surprised when Healy just nodded.

"Okay," he said softly, looking her up and down, taking in her red cheeks and puffy eyes and remembering, suddenly, that Inmate Miller had been part of Red's family. For the first time, the girl's death became more to him than just another PR nightmare for the prison.

He couldn't bring himself to feel any real grief for her; after all, he hadn't known her. She hadn't even been his counselee and he mostly heard about her in passing. But he felt bad for Red, because he was already inclined to care about her more than he did most of the women here, and because she obviously wasn't handling this well.

He had been just leaving his office, having been kept late by overdue paperwork—not that it really mattered; it wasn't like he had much to go home to these days—and had seen the light on the kitchen. Annoyed at having yet another chore presented to him, he'd walked in here with every intention of giving out a shot, but he couldn't do that to Red. Not even on his worst days, the ones where he wanted to burn this whole prison to the ground, and especially not now, when she was obviously fighting back tears and looked, quite frankly, like hell.

"Well, I'm going to need you to cut your juice party short and get back to the dorms," Healy said, gesturing pointedly to the bottle in Red's hand, which she promptly stowed away.

"Yeah, all right," she replied. She made no move to get up, though; she simply stared ahead at the dry-erase calendar pinned to the wall in front of her desk and watched as the shapes of the numbers and letters written there shifted and blurred together.

"I'm serious, Red. I can't just let you stay here." Something occurred to Healy then, and he held out his hand to her, in case she needed help getting up.

She didn't take it, though, she only stared blankly at him, then pushed her chair back and lifted herself up, grunting and grimacing as her back spasmed. She shuffled towards the door, and Healy followed her out, glad to see that Red at least had the presence of mind to lock the office up behind her.

"Do you need help getting back to your bunk? I could walk you. I could even make it look like I'm dragging you, if you're worried about someone seeing."

Red chuckled, and Healy felt some satisfaction in noting that it seemed like a genuine laugh.

"No," she replied, still slurring her words but sounding at least marginally more controlled, "Thanks, but I'll be fine."

She didn't entirely believe it; the alcohol made it slightly easier for her to lie to herself, but Red had always been a realist. Still, Healy seemed convinced, and that was its own kind of comfort.


	14. One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)

_One has my name, the other has my heart._

 _With one I'll remain, that's how my heartaches start._

 _One has brown eyes, the other's eyes are blue._

 _To one I am tied, to the other I am true_

 _"One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)" - Jerry Wallace_

Red glanced over at the clock, frowning when she saw the small hand move onto the 4 right before her eyes. _Blyadi_ , she said to herself, practically slamming the hamburger patty she'd been shaping down onto the cooking sheet in front of her. Norma, standing at her side, jumped, and that made Red feel bad. It wasn't unusual for her to take her frustrations out on her kitchen subordinates, but she hadn't meant to startle her best friend.

"I'm sorry, Norma," she reached out to put a reassuring hand on the other woman's shoulder, then realized that her hands were covered in raw meat germs and pulled back. Norma shrugged and then gave a small smile, which Red returned.

"You'll man the kitchen for me for a while, huh?" she asked, walking over to the sink to wash her hands. Norma gave her a questioning look, and Red elaborated: "The time has come. I have to go to Healy's office to accept my punishment."

The mute woman nodded, then grimaced theatrically.

"My thoughts exactly," Red said as she left the kitchen.

She shrugged on her hoodie as she made the short walk to the counselor's office, knocking on the door when she got there and hoping that she'd gotten her days mixed up and there would be nobody there. No such luck; Healy's voice came through the door, beckoning her to come in.

As she opened the door, she arranged her face into its usual mask of commingled apathy and general disgust, two emotions which it was impossible to feel at the same time but which Red somehow always managed to radiate simultaneously.

She couldn't see the woman; only Healy. He had gotten up to meet Red at the door, and his little slip of a wife—somehow Red just knew that she'd be skinny and perfect—was hidden behind his bulk.

"Good afternoon, Red," he greeted. She nodded in reply, then watched as he fell back and she caught her first sight of his mail-order bride. Katrina—or Katharina; Red honestly couldn't be arsed to remember the little tart's name—was everything the older woman had known she would be. Her hair was wavy and not just blonde, but actually golden, like the gold that little Galina, listening to her mother's fairytales before bed, had always imagined Rumpelstiltskin churning out on his magical loom. She was thin and perfectly proportioned, and her face in person was even more radiant than her picture. It was a remarkably beautiful face, and Red wanted to slap all of the pretty off of it.

 _I was never beautiful like that_ , she found herself thinking, unable to suppress the envy she felt. As a girl Red had been a pretty enough, but clumsy and awkward and never quite sure of the right clothes to wear, what to do with her hair or makeup or her limbs. Even just one look at Healy's wife told her that this woman had never experienced a moment of self-doubt, at least not as far as her looks were concerned, and Red instantly hated her for it.

She was careful to hide it, and she was such a pro at suppressing her emotions that she was sure none of that resentment showed on her face. Still, though, she knew that the other woman could sense it. Beautiful girls like that seemed to be born with a sixth sense that allowed them to sniff out lesser women's envy and take special pleasure in it.

"Red," Healy said, cutting through her thoughts, "I'd like you to meet my wife, Katya."

The younger woman looked Red in the eye for the first time, and Red felt some—but by no means all, not even most—of her anger at this woman, who had done nothing to her except exist, melt away. Red could tell that Katya's poker face was almost as strong as her own, but unlike Red, Katya couldn't keep her emotions out of her eyes. In the other woman's gaze, Red recognized herself, thirty years ago, new to this country and speaking barely enough English to buy a metro ticket. Only the Galina Reznikova of three decades ago had had resources that this woman did not have: a husband that she could talk to, a mother-in-law, and a network of other Russians to help her adjust.

 _And also_ , Red said to herself, unable to keep from being nasty even as she empathized with Katya Healy, _I was smart and I learned quickly_. By the time she'd been in America as long as Katya had, Red had known enough English to go about her day-to-day routine without looking like an idiot. That was about all she had known; she hadn't been about to start writing English sonnets or anything, but three years in, she at least hadn't needed a fucking translator.

 _Which means she's either too stupid to learn, or too lazy_ , Red thought. Probably a little of both.

" _Privyet_ …Red," Katya said, sounding friendly enough but making no effort to rise from her chair.

" _Privyet_ ," replied Red, in a tone that was neither hostile nor friendly, but still managed to convey how little she relished being there.

Even Healy was astute enough to catch on to the tension between the two women, and moved to do something to ease it, explaining that he thought it might be best if Red sat at his desk and he and Katya took the two visitors' chairs.

"Oh, I think I'll stand, if that's okay with you," Red said, "I only have twenty minutes before I have to go back for supper prep. I did tell you that, didn't I?"

"Yeah," replied Healy, "Yeah, you did. Just…umm…thought I'd offer."

Without replying, Red went to stand in front of his desk, while Healy himself settled into the chair beside his wife.

The conversation started out innocuously enough, with the two women getting to know each other as intimately as either of them cared to. This really only extended to learning each other's hometowns and what jobs they had done before coming to America. Red was not at all surprised to learn that, even though Katya seemed to have grown up poor enough, she'd had nowhere near the kind of deprived childhood Red had experienced.

Throughout their meeting, Red tackled both Katya's and Healy's complaints, learning far more than she had ever wanted to know about Healy in the process, and becoming more and more annoyed each time Katya opened her mouth. Her complaints, for the most part, weren't unreasonable: Healy never helped out with housework and left it all for Katya and her mother to do, he had horrid taste in both movies and TV shows, and he was a terrible listener, which came as absolutely no shock to Red.

What annoyed her was Katya's tone, and the trivial little things she complained about. "I don't want to spend my whole life watching _Storage Wars_." _Give me a fucking break_ , Red thought. In the first few years of her and Dmitri's marriage, they had been so mystified that in America they were both allowed and able to own a television that it never would have occurred to them to fight over what to watch on it.

Finally, on the edge of losing her temper, Red leaned over to address the younger woman directly.

"He's got a government job, dummy," she hissed in Russian, "It could be much worse."

That was a truth Red had seen firsthand. When she'd run her family's shop, she always knew the mail-orders from the Americanized way they dressed, and how uncomfortable they seemed in their own clothes, the way that they lingered at the counter making any excuse to talk to her, or to Dmitri, or even to her sons. Like they were desperate to speak their mother tongue with anyone, even if it was a fifteen-year-old boy whose accent was more New York than Novosibirsk. Mostly, though, Red had known them from the sunglasses they never took off, or the way they caked on foundation over the bruises. If the worst thing Sam Healy did to his wife was make her watch shitty reality TV, then she was one of the lucky ones.

Red never got a chance to impart any of that wisdom to the younger woman, though. Just as she was informing Sam of his desperate need for a pedicure—another goddamned detail she could have lived the rest of her life happily not knowing—there was a knock on the door, and Bennett entered, announcing that Caputo needed to see Red.

"I'm busy," she said dismissively.

"I'd go now, if I were you," the young man said. He was trying so hard to sound authoritative that Red almost pitied him. She simply couldn't take him seriously. And then, something clicked in her brain, and her face fell.

"That little bitch Mendez," she rasped, "Couldn't go down like a man."

She turned to a perplexed Healy, putting an entreating hand on his shoulder and instructing him to take care of her girls. He yelled after Bennett as the younger man followed Red out of the room, but got no response, and Katya yelled to Red, clearly having no comprehension of what had just happened or the fact that the other woman wouldn't be coming back.

She turned to look at Sam, who only shrugged and looked disturbed.

"I…I guess that's it for today," he said, clearly lost in his own head and not focused on her.

Katya only shrugged. Fine by her. She couldn't deny that being able to talk—in her own language, to someone who wasn't her mother—had been nice, but still, even from the little contact she'd had with Red, Katya already knew that she didn't like her. More accurately, she didn't like the way that the older woman was with Sam.

Katya Healy wasn't terribly invested in her husband. Most of the time, it was all that she could do to make pleasant small talk with him. But still, he was _her_ husband, and she had never felt possessive of him until the Russian inmate had waltzed in and talked to him—and touched him—as though she, rather than Katya, was the wife.

Probably, Katya thought, she doesn't even realize she's doing it. Sam seemed equally oblivious. But Katya noticed, and she didn't like it.


	15. I Run to You

_I run my life_

 _Or is it running me?_

 _Run from my past_

 _I run too fast_

 _Or too slow it seems._

 _When lies become the truth_

 _That's when I run to you._

 _"I Run to You" - Lady Antebellum_

 **Chapter 15**

Red sat cross-legged on her bunk, wrapped in her crocheted blanket while mindlessly putting the forkful of ramen into her mouth. In the week that had passed since she'd been exiled from her kitchen, she had eaten almost exclusively this. In that time, she had become so accustomed to microwave soup that she no longer even registered the cardboard taste of the noodles.

Even if she had the capacity to taste her food, she couldn't possibly have taken any delight in it. She hadn't seen Gina before they had taken her off to medical, but the news was all over the prison; everyone was talking about how bad she looked, how she'd had to be transferred out of the prison, to a real hospital, because her burns were so bad. How she would be lucky if she lived.

Red's eyes fell upon the scraps of torn-up paper on the floor; she hadn't even bothered to pick them up after Norma left. That had been the final nail in the coffin, the fact that even Norma, the kindest person she knew, with the biggest capacity for pity, hadn't been able to forgive her. _Why should she?_ Red thought.

She had been lucky. Everyone knew what she had done, but no one at the administrative level had been able to prove anything. That lack of concrete proof was the only reason she wasn't in SHU or, worse, down the hill, even though Red knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she belonged there, with all of the murderers and psychopaths.

She had killed Trisha with her short-sightedness, and now she had probably killed Gina, too. Two of her daughters' blood was on her hands, and Red was paralyzed with guilt, prostrate with it, to the point that she couldn't make herself leave the dorms, not for anything, except when her biological processes—hunger, or the need to relieve herself—compelled her to.

She was surprised that none of the guards had physically removed her from her cube, dragged her to work or to the shower. Somehow, Red was hoping that they would, maybe that they might rough her up a little in the process. She deserved that, and so much more.

Still, besides the fact that she was out of the kitchen, it seemed that not much about her status had changed. The COs had always left her alone, for the most part, because she was vital to the smooth operation of the prison, because she had been there forever and because she was a model inmate, or had been up until a few days ago. It seemed that no one had informed any of the guards that she wasn't above reprimand anymore, and so they were still mostly letting her do whatever.

Red finished her tasteless repast and then set the Styrofoam cup down onto her end table. She'd clean it up later; it wasn't as if she had a bunkmate to complain about the mess, and she didn't have the energy even to throw the container two feet to the trashcan. All she wanted to do was lie back down and stare at the wall some more. Or maybe the ceiling this time; the ceiling might be a welcome change of pace.

She heard the sound of footsteps approaching her cube, but couldn't even be bothered to get out of bed and try to look busy. She did, however, raise her head when Donaldson appeared in small opening of the cubicle.

"Reznikov," he said. Red only nodded, unable to summon the willpower to respond verbally.

"Healy wants to see you in his office," the CO continued. Red nodded again, throwing her blanket off of her and standing, wincing as her back and hips re-aligned themselves and adjusted to the standing position. Her muscles had already gotten used to being mostly stationary, and now that she was moving, everything hurt.

Donaldson stood by as she left the cube, watching her walk towards the exit but not following her, as she had expected him to. _Why do they still trust me so much?_ she found herself idly wondering.

She knocked on Healy's door, and was beckoned inside. Healy's instruction to shut the door was, after how many times she had visited him over the years, superfluous, but it was habit by now, and Red, despite herself, was comforted by it. Some things, at least, hadn't changed.

She wondered what the counselor wanted. Maybe, she dared to hope, he was going to tell her that he'd spoken to Caputo, convinced the captain of the guards that there's no way Red would have been involved in drug smuggling, and Mendoza had been sent packing and the kitchen was hers again. Red amazed herself, sometimes, with the way that even she could slip so easily into fancy.

"Red," Healy greeted as she slid down into her usual chair, "How are you doing?"

"Wonderfully," she replied, "Never better."

Healy caught the flatness of her voice, and had the decency not to try and lighten the mood with one of his stupid jokes, or a useless platitude. He didn't even beat around the bush; instead, he addressed her with an efficiency that was uncharacteristic for him, but which she was nevertheless grateful for.

"I've been told that you haven't been reporting for work duty," he had.

Red nodded. "Yes, that's correct."

"Well, what's the problem? Have you been feeling sick? Is your back acting up again?"

"Yes," replied Red, "Yes, you could say that."

Healy sighed and leaned back in his chair, looking her up and down, taking note of the greasiness of her hair, the pallor of her un-made-up skin.

"I can't let you skip out on work, Red," he said, more gently than he normally would have, "Look, I know the last few days have been hard on you. I know this is a tough transition for you, but unless there's something medically wrong, you have to go to work, or I have to put you in Seg. Do you need to go to medical, Red?"

She looked up from the spot on the floor that she had been staring at since she sat down, meeting Healy's soft blue eyes. She saw kindness there, and genuine concern. She saw remorse, too. He knew that she'd done nothing wrong, at least initially; she'd done nothing to merit the loss of her kitchen, and he was sorry, and if he could have done anything for her he would have.

 _Maybe,_ Red thought, something clicking in her mind suddenly, _he can._ Maybe he could make sure that she got what she deserved.

Healy stood by, waiting for her answer, and Red swiftly gave it to him: "I burned Gina."

Healy's brows knitted together in confusion. "What?" he asked.

"Murphy," Red clarified, "It's my fault that she got burned. I snuck into the kitchen after hours, and I rubbed cooking oil all over that oven, and that's why it happened. I did it; it's my fault."

"Red, I…I don't…why are you telling me this?"

"Does it matter why? It's the truth. I messed with the kitchen; I put my fellow inmates in danger, and I did it on purpose. You have to send me to Max."

"Max? You…you want to go to Max?"

"I deserve to," Red said, meeting Healy's eyes. He saw pain there, pain that she couldn't hide, and something in the way she looked at him touched him on a level that he couldn't even begin to understand.

Red had no idea, but Healy had been so angry lately. With everything that was happening at home, the fact that the situation with Katya wasn't improving, and now at work Chapman and her fucking fiancé and her goddamn lesbo prison girlfriend were running roughshod over him and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. Anger and frustration over all of it had been seething just below Healy's surface, turning into a hard knot in his stomach that was there always, and making him want to tear someone's head off, whether literally or metaphorically, he didn't know; at this point, he would settle for either.

All of that seemed to melt away, though, when he looked into Red's eyes and saw the emotions swirling there, the genuine sadness and, worse, the desolation. This woman had lost everything, and she hadn't had much to begin with, but now she had even less. Less than a week ago, she'd been running this entire prison, and now she sat, unwashed and defeated, on the other side of his desk practically begging, not for punishment, but for absolution. Healy couldn't do much for her, or, it seemed, even for himself, but at least he could give her that.

"I'm not going to send you to Max, Red," he said, watching her face fall, "I won't send you to Seg, either."

"But I—"

"No," Healy replied firmly, "Nobody was found at fault for what happened to Murphy; the stove malfunctioned, that's all."

Red opened her mouth to say something, but Healy cut her off.

"Now," he said, "I want you to get out of here, and in the morning, I want you to get up bright and early, go take a shower, and report to Bell for grounds crew, or else I really will have to send you to SHU. Okay?"

Red sat still for just a moment, thinking, turning her options over and over in her mind. Why was he being so deliberately blind? Maybe she should go to Caputo; he'd have no problem sending her down to rot in Seg for the rest of her sentence, like she deserved to. Or maybe, she thought, I just won't go to work tomorrow, and then he'll have no choice.

She glanced back over at him, and he simply dismissed her with a wave of his hand, indicating that he could not, or would not, do anything for her. It wasn't until she had closed the office door behind her that Red realized that that was the whole point. Healy wouldn't do anything for her now because he already had. He'd given her a choice, between starting over and trying to put all of this miserable shit behind her, or giving up and letting herself be taken away to feel sorry for herself while eating prison loaf and probably getting the shit beaten out of her in Max.

Red still wasn't sure which she would prefer, and she wasn't convinced that she deserved this chance, but at least now it felt like she had options again.


	16. I'm Your Puppet

**Author's Note:** **I'm iffy about this chapter. I wanted to get into Sam's head because part of what fascinates me about this character (and what I really appreciate in how he's written on the show) is that I think he could be a really good guy if it weren't for the fact that he's such a damn MRA (Men's Rights Activist). So I tried to kind of get into the brain of the MRA, and I think the essence of most MRA's is that they really do just want to be accepted by women but also they're so creepy that women turn away from them and they can't figure out why because they have absolutely zero self-awareness so they get frustrated and their frustration with themselves turns into hate for women. And I think that Sam is like this, too; he wants to be a good guy and make women happy but he has no clue how and he gets frustrated and that's what I was trying to convey here. Please R &R and tell me if I nailed it.**

 _Your every wish is my command_

 _All you gotta do is wiggle your little hand_

 _I'm your puppet_

 _"I'm Your Puppet" - Marvin Gaye_

 **Chapter 16**

" _Ya ponimayu,_ " Sam dutifully repeated after the robotic woman's voice on the tape, trying to add some inflection, just a little bit of flair, to the syllables as he pronounced them. _Fucking ironic_ , he thought. "I understand" was the very last phrase he'd found himself uttering in the past month. Why couldn't these stupid conversation tapes teach him how to say things like, "What's wrong," or "Why won't you talk to me?" Why wasn't there a "desperate husband" version of these lessons? Maybe a "poor shmuck who didn't know what the hell he was getting himself into and now has to live with the consequences of his naiveté" bonus pack?

He didn't know what, but something had shifted in the Healy household ever since Christmas. He and Katya had gone out of town to spend the holiday with his older brother, Hank, and his family. It was the first Christmas that they'd done that, because the previous two years Sam had thought that the culture shock of being around Hank, who almost unfailingly got way too drunk, and his wife, Cindy, who was a gabber and a hugger, might be too much. He missed his family, though; ever since their dad's death, Hank and his brood had been the only close kin Sam had left, and he hadn't seen them since before he and Katya got married.

Sam had thought that the trip would be a perfect bonding experience for Katya and himself. His family owned a lake house upstate; nothing fancy, more of a cabin than anything, but there was enough room for the whole Healy clan if Hank's kids slept on the living room floor, and it was pretty in winter. Besides, Katya bothered Sam almost constantly about wanting to go somewhere. She wanted to go to NYC, or Niagara Falls, or somewhere else that neither Sam couldn't reconcile with either his work schedule or his pocketbook. He couldn't take her everywhere, but he could, he had reasoned, give her a nice Christmas.

It had seemed, though, almost from the moment they got on the road, that Katya was determined for it to be the worst Christmas either of them had ever seen. No sooner had they left her mother behind in Utica—Pavla hadn't wanted to endure the car ride; she had been insistent about it, but Katya still found a way to blame even that on Sam—did Katya stop talking except to complain about something. She had been sullen on the car ride to the cabin, rude to Hank and his family and cold towards Sam, and when they got back from the vacation from Hell, she had moved herself into her mother's bedroom and not come back to sleep in Sam's bed—in the bed with him, but not actually _with_ him—for a week.

It might have been easy for Sam to brush it off as just Katya being a bitch—maybe her "friend" was visiting, maybe she was just homesick. At first, he had used all of the above as excuses, expecting that the situation would just resolve itself. When it didn't, however, Sam had begun to turn the blame inward. "She's bored," Red had told him when he had brought Katya in for that translating session, and so Sam started taking her out more, to movies and restaurants and once to the zoo, none of which seemed to phase Katya. "Stop being so jealous when other people look at her." That one was harder for Sam, but he had tried. He had tried so hard, and still it seemed like there was a permanent storm cloud over his wife's head, and he just knew that it was his fault, but he couldn't figure out how to fix it.

 _If I could bring her in to talk to Red again..._ , he found himself thinking. That was out of the question, though. Somehow he didn't think that Red was in any fit state to help anybody. He'd barely seen her since she had burst into his office demanding to be sent to Max. All he knew was that, according to the weekly reports he got, she had been showing up for work duty, doing an unremarkable enough job that Bell hadn't seen fit to make any special note of her performance on grounds crew, and she hadn't gotten any shots or had anything of any note happen to her which, given the circumstances, Sam supposed was the best case scenario.

He found himself wanting to talk to her, to ask her how she was doing. The few times he'd seen her, he had noticed that she seemed to be letting herself go, and it almost pained him to see her looking so dejected when she'd been so alive before. He didn't know what he could have done for her, though. He could call her in, and she would have to come, but she wouldn't talk to him. Red had never come to him for counseling. No one did anymore; it seemed that all he did was fill out paperwork for inmate processing, work assignments, and punishments. The name plate on his desk still said "Sam Healy, MSW," but he hadn't done any real social work in more years than he could count.

There was a knock on the door, and Sam looked up to see Fisher standing in the doorway. He greeted her pleasantly enough, genuinely glad to see her back at work after what Pelage had done to her. After Fisher came the hillbilly meth girl that everyone called Pennsatucky, whom Healy had had almost no contact with in all the time she'd been here. Except once, when he had made the biggest mistake of a career that had been long and, as Healy would have realized if he'd bothered to think about it critically enough, littered with missteps.

He still didn't know why he had done what he did that night. He had been angry with Chapman, sure. How could he not have been after what she'd said to him at Thanksgiving? He had only been trying to teach her a lesson, to let her know how prison worked and how she would have to behave if she wanted to get through her fifteen months and get out. She'd been vindictive and ungrateful, and what she'd said to him was so foul, so disrespectful and…so true. Healy tried not to think about it, not to dwell on the words she'd said to him, but when he did, in the dark of the night as he lay in bed not sleeping or during the long drive home when he couldn't find anything good on the radio and had nothing else to drown out his thoughts, he knew that it was all true, and that was what had gotten him so angry.

Sam couldn't even remember, now, what he had actually seen that night. He had blocked it all out, masked it in the story that he'd prepared, if anyone had come after him and asked him about it, which thankfully no one had, because Chapman and Doggett were both locked up in SHU. He hadn't seen a weapon, he had only seen them talking, heatedly, yes, but inmates had verbal altercations all the time and nothing came of it, and besides, women were catty. They traded barbs with each other regularly; it didn't mean anything. He'd thought it best to just let the ladies work things out on their own. That was his story, and he would have stuck to it if anyone had asked him, but nobody seemed to even realize he had been there that night, and that was the way he wanted to keep it.

He tried to intimate as much to Doggett in his conversation with her, but the girl simply didn't seem to get it. Sam couldn't tell if it was because she was still doped up from the medication they had given her, or maybe Chapman actually had managed to knock every single one of Doggett's screws loose. But talking to her was like talking to a kindergartener.

In a last-ditch effort to make Doggett understand what he was telling her, Sam said, as steadily and rationally as he could, given that his entire career was balanced upon what this Appalachian idiot might or might not say, and who to, "She angered you, you confronted her, and you fought."

"Yes," Doggett admitted. Hallelujah, Sam thought, now we're getting somewhere.

"That's it. End of story," he said. His heart skipped a beat when Doggett's expression changed, and he could practically see the gears finally starting to turn in her head.

"No," she said, "There's more."

"I didn't know what I was seeing Doggett," Sam said, the words flowing out in an angry torrent before he could stop them. Doggett, for her part, did not seem even remotely phased when he stood up and loomed over her, trying his best to look as large and threatening as he could. The fact that she wasn't fazed by his performance only angered Sam more, and, before he knew it, his voice had taken on the dark tone that he usually reserved for his wife during the worst of their fights: "Don't think for a second that anybody is going to believe a meth-addled hillbilly over me. Be one hundred percent fucking clear about that."

"Well," Doggett said, still calm as a cucumber, "They might just believe the poster girl for the Right to Life movement…"

When she finally left his office, Sam was practically shaking with rage. How did this always happen to him? How in the fuck did all of the women in this prison—every single goddamn woman he encountered at this job—always end up getting exactly what they wanted out of him?

He slammed his fist down on his desk in anger, scattering the pile of forms he had been filling out and neatly stacking together earlier in the day, and stared at the wall, fuming. When he could finally move, when he was no longer paralyzed by rage, Sam looked down at his feet and saw the disordered sheets of paper that had collected on the floor. With a sigh, he bent down to pick them up, still seething, but now at least able to think.

 _Why_ , he repeated, _does this always happen to me?_ Sam had always thought of himself as one of the good guys. All he wanted was to help people and to live a peaceful life. Why, then, was everything always getting so screwed up? _It's the fucking women_ , Sam thought, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. His wife, and her ungrateful attitude and unwillingness to be satisfied with anything he did. The women here, and the way that they took him for granted. Behind every problem in his life, there was some woman trying to pull his strings, to make him into their puppet, and Sam was tired of it, but he didn't know what to do about it.


	17. The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

_Well, I've got a secret, I cannot say._

 _A modern movement to give it away._

 _You've got something that I understand._

 _Hold it in tightly; caught on command._

 _"The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" - Queens of the Stone Age_

 **Chapter 17**

The wheels in her mind hadn't turned like this in quite some time. For months, Red had kept herself locked in vacant complacency. She'd gotten up each morning, taken a shower, eaten whatever terrible shit the Spanish girls had for breakfast—though it pained her, physically _pained_ her, to see someone else in her kitchen—and reported to work duty. She had accepted a lot. The fact that no one would talk to her except a bunch of senior citizens, even sharing her cube with, of all fucking people, Chapman, who actually wasn't turning out to be as bad of a roommate as Red anticipated.

Really, she'd not had much of a choice. Her kitchen was gone. Her family was gone, and she had no way to get them back, because her connection with the outside was also gone. She couldn't even get things for herself now, much less for anyone else. If she were being honest, she was also beyond angry that no one out of her prison family, not even Nicky or Norma, would speak to her. All of the things she had done for them, for _all_ of them, and still it turned out that all she had been to them was a way to get cheap makeup and candy.

 _Little ingrates_ , Red thought venomously as she cleared overgrown branches and empty pots from the table in front of her. She told herself that she didn't even _want_ them back, and almost managed to convince herself of it. Now, though, she needed them back.

Her heart had sunk all the way to the bottom of her stomach when she saw Vee in the bathroom. As she stood there, cowering against the wall, the only rational thought that echoed in her mind was a single syllable. _No_. Nonononono. Not again.

So, even though she lied to herself and thought that they could all go to hell, Nicky and Norma and even Gina, the wronged party, and all the rest of them, she knew that she couldn't leave their relationship like this. She needed them. She needed people, as many of them as she could get. Frieda was terrifying, and the rest of her newfound friends were murderers and degenerates and even though they were old, they were exactly the kind of people she wanted on her side when the rubber met the road. But they weren't enough, numerically. Red needed her family and, although they didn't know it yet, they needed her.

 _And what I have to do now_ , she thought, _is clear the way for this reunion_. It didn't matter how much she resented it; she needed to be able to supply them with their sunflower seeds and gum and whatever the hell else they wanted. Red thought of Nicky's first night in prison, the way that little girl had puked her guts out from dusk til dawn. And Red had been there the whole time, helping her, holding her, letting Nicky stain the front of her nightgown with tears. She'd done the same for Gina, and for Lorna, too, although the latter hadn't been detoxing from drugs but, in her melodramatic way, from a love that was doomed whether she wanted to admit it or not. And still, she could only get them back if she gave them lipstick. _Ugh. People_.

The door to the greenhouse opened, and Red raised her head, ready to chew out whoever it was who had burst in so unceremoniously. When she came face-to-face with Sam Healy, though, the biting remark that she'd been preparing froze on her tongue. She wasn't any happier to see him than she would have been to see one of her fellow inmates, but there might be actual consequences if she snapped at him.

She'd not spoken to him in two months, not since she'd burst into his office to confess all of her sins, and he'd refused to hear them. Red had been bewildered by his actions then, stuck somewhere between resentment and confusion. Now, though, she appreciated what he'd done for her, but she had no idea how she might go about telling him that, or how to avoid the subject if forced into conversation with him, so she'd avoided him at all costs.

She couldn't sidestep him forever, though; she had known that, and now it looked like it was time to face the music. If he asked her how she was doing, she thought she might scream.

"Quite a little challenge you've set for yourself, Red," Healy remarked, surveying the greenhouse. _If you only knew the half of it_ , she thought.

"Yes," she said, sounding more severe than she meant to, "I'm getting that feeling."

He addressed the other women, requesting a private conversation with Red, and Red felt, for the fiftieth time since Vee's return, the sinking sensation in her stomach that was, unfortunately, starting to feel like her natural state of being. _Maybe I won't have to wait for her to kill me_ , Red thought, _maybe I'll have a coronary like Anita and that'll take care of things_. Healy didn't frighten her in that way; he didn't scare her at all, really, but he had no real reason to seek her out, especially these days, and that could only mean…

"So, they're putting up a production of Our Town at Litchfield High tonight," he began, and it was all Red could do not to roll her eyes, "You think maybe that'd be a good thing to take Katya to see?"

 _Oh, for fuck's sake_ , she thought. _No_. It was the same refrain that came into her head each time she saw Vee, but this was a different no, a clear protest. How goddamn tone-deaf could he be? She had never wanted to be in any way involved in Healy's marriage, and she'd made that very clear to him.

Before she could stop herself, Red opened her mouth and let fly some biting remark, something that she wouldn't even remember later, but which her sharp mind crafted to cut right to the bone. Red was overcome with the urge to find a vine and use it to hang herself as Healy rambled on and on about his wife, his mother-in-law, blah blah blah.

Red suspected that he was just lonely; from what little she had been able to gather during her one encounter with Katya, the woman probably wasn't very good company for Sam. She probably wouldn't be very good company for anyone who wasn't twenty-one years old with rock-hard abs and a one-track mind. And from what Red knew about Healy (which was, though she refused to admit it, quite a lot; she had probably spent more time psychoanalyzing the man than literally anyone else in the universe), he probably didn't have anyone else to talk to.

That, though, was not Red's problem. She had bigger things to worry about than whether or not Healy was getting any, or if he was lonely or fulfilled. And honestly, she was so beyond done hearing about his wife. She had met Katya Healy exactly once, and once was enough for Red to know everything she needed to know about her, including the fact including that she didn't like the woman, and it was annoying to talk or even think about her.

Also, Red had already figured out the secret of his marriage, the thing wasn't a secret to anyone but him, which Healy would probably never get on his own: it didn't matter what he did or didn't do; it would never matter. His wife would never be satisfied because she didn't want to be. Red wanted to tell him this, to scream it in his face and end her tirade with, "So leave me the fuck alone and don't bring this to me ever again." What good would it do, though, when he was so willfully blind? The most she could hope for was to get him off her ass for the time being.

"Healy," she said flatly, tossing an old bag of mulch aside in exasperation and advancing on him, "We had an agreement, back when I ran the kitchen. You scratched my back and I told you when it was time to trim your ear hairs. But I don't need my back scratched anymore, and I'd rather be left alone."

Just like she knew he would—because she knew him; God help her, she fucking _knew_ him—Healy refused to take the hint. It wasn't that he didn't understand her; it was just that he would not be deterred.

"I'm just asking your opinion," he said.

Red paused, sighed, and then realized that, just like always, she had no choice. "Skip the play; take her to dinner," she said, sulkily.

Healy thanked her, and then, finally, he left, with Red glaring daggers at his back and trying to hide it by making herself look busy. Thankfully, no one else picked up on the sudden downturn in her mood. Except, of course, for Frieda, who was smarter than all the rest of them put together and who actually paid attention.

Thankfully, Red's new friend chose not to say anything, at least not about Healy. Instead, she turned to Red and asked, only half-jokingly, "Can we grow pot?"

Red appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood, though she refused to acknowledge it.

"No," she replied.

"Ah, come on! We could sell that shit; make a ton of money. Or just keep it to ourselves. It'd be a nice escape."

"I'm not getting sent to Seg and getting my sentence extended so you can have an escape," Red said.

Frieda only shrugged, seeming to dismiss the subject, but when Red looked over to her, she could see the other woman giving her a knowing look. Red knew that none of the rest of their group had, at least as yet, figured out why they were clearing the greenhouse, but Red suspected that Frieda had an inkling. She knew, at least, that something was up. Frieda was smart, and dangerous, and Red was just glad that she was on her side. Maybe, just maybe, with Frieda and the rest of the Golden Girls—and her family, if she could get those spoiled little brats to come back around—she might just make it through this shit after all.


End file.
